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THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 

OF THE WORKS OF 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



LAY MORALS 



THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 
OF STEVENSON'S WORKS 

NOVELS AND ROMANCES 

TREASURE ISLAND 

PRINCE OTTO 

KIDNAPPED 

THE BLACK ARROW 

THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE 

THE WRONG BOX 

THE WRECKER 

DAVID BALFOUR 

THE EBB-TIDE 

WEIR OF HERMISTON 

ST. IVES 

SHORTER STORIES 

NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS 

THE DYNAMITER 

THE MERRY MEN, contaUiing DR. JEKYLL 

AND MR. HYDE 
ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS 

ESSAYS, TRAVELS, 6- SKETCHES 

AN INLAND VOYAGE 

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE 

FAMILIAR STUDIES 

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT, cojitainins THE 

SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
ESSAYS OF TRAVEL AND IN THE ART OF 

WRITING 
LAY MORALS AND OTHER PAPERS 

POEMS 
COMPLETE POEMS 



THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS 
STEVENSON. 4 vols. 

Thirty "volumes. Sold suigly or in sets 
Pervolunte, Cloth, $1.00; Limfi Leather, $i.2S net 

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 



BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 

LAY MORALS 

AND OTHER PAPERS 



BY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON j 



WITH A PREFACE BY AIRS. STEVENSON 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1911 



<^^^' 



,s^ 



V> 



Copyright, iSgS, igii 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 

Published May, 191 1 




©aA28(;855 



PREFACE 

TO 

THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION 

(" FATHER DAMIEN" ) 

IN our long voyage on the yacht Casco, we visited 
many islands; I believe on every one we found 
the scourge of leprosy. In the Marquesas there 
was a regular leper settlement, though the persons 
living there seemed free to wander where they 
wished, fishing on the beach, or visiting friends in 
the villages. I remember one afternoon, at Anaho, 
when my husband and I, tired after a long quest for 
shells, sat down on the sand to rest awhile, a native 
man stepped out from under some cocoanut trees 
regarding us hesitatingly as though fearful of in- 
truding. My husband waved an invitation to the 
stranger to join us, offering his cigarette to the man 
in the island fashion. The cigarette was accepted, 
and after a puff or two, courteously passed back 
again according to native etiquette. The hand that 
held it was the maimed hand of a leper. To my 
consternation my husband took the cigarette and 



VI 



PREFACE 



smoked it out. Afterwards when we were alone 
and I spoke of my horror he said, "I could not 
mortify the man. And if you think I liked doing 
it! That was another reason; because I didn't 
want to." 

Another day while we were still anchored in 
Anaho Bay, a messenger from round a distant 
headland came in a whale-boat with an urgent re- 
quest that we go to see a young white girl who was 
ill with some mysterious malady. We had supposed 
that, with the beach comber, " Charley the red," we 
were the only white people on our side of the isl- 
and. Though there was much wind that day and 
the sea rai^i high, we started at once, impelled partly 
by curiosity and partly by the pathetic nature of 
the message. Fortunately we took our luncheon 
with us, eating it on the beach before we went up to 
the house where the sick girl lay. Our hostess, 
the girl's mother, met us with regrets that we had 
already lunched, saying, "I have a most excellent 
cook; here he is, now." She turned, as she spoke, 
to an elderly Chinaman who was plainly in an ad- 
vanced stage of leprosy. When the man was gone, 
my husband asked if she had no fear of contagion. 
"I don't believe in contagion," was her reply. But 
there was little doubt as to what ailed her daughter. 
She was certainly suffering from leprosy. We could 



PREFACE vii 

only advise that the girl be taken to the French post 
at Santa Maria Bay where there was a doctor. 

On our return to the Casco we confessed to each 
other with what alarm and repugnance we touched 
the miserable girl. We talked long that evening of 
Father Damien, his sublime heroism, and his mar- 
tyrdom which was already nearing its sad end. Be- 
yond all noble qualities my husband placed courage. 
The more he saw of leprosy, and he saw much in 
the islands, the higher rose his admiration for the 
simple priest of Molokai. '' I must see Molokai," 
he said many times. "I must somehow manage to 
see Molokai.'/ 

In January, 1889, we arrived in Honolulu, settling 
in a pleasant cottage by the sea to rest until we 
were ready to return to England. The Casco we 
sent back to San Francisco with the captain. But 
the knowledge that every few days some vessel was 
leaving Honolulu to cruise among islands we had 
not seen, and now should never see, was more than 
we could bear. First we engaged passage ^ on a 
missionary ship, but changed our minds — my hus- 
band would not be allowed to smoke on board, for 
one reason — and chartered the trading schooner 
Equator. This was thought too rough a voyage for 
my mother-in-law, as indeed it would have been, so 
she was sent, somewhat protesting, back to Scotland. 



viii PREFACE 

My husband was still intent on seeing Molokai. 
After the waste of much time and red tape, he finally 
received an official permission to visit the leper 
settlement. It did not occur to him it would be 
necessary to get a separate official permission to 
leave Molokai; hence he was nearly left behind when 
the vessel sailed out. He only saved himself by a 
prodigious leap which landed him on board the boat 
whence nothing but force could dislodge him. By 
the doctor's orders he took gloves to wear as a pre- 
cautionary measure against contagion, but they were 
never worn. At first he avoided shaking hands, 
but when he played croquet with the young leper 
girls he would not listen to the Mother Superior's 
warning that he must wear gloves. He thought it 
might remind them of their condition. "What will 
you do if you find you have contracted leprosy?" 
I asked. "Do?" he replied; "why you and I would 
spend the rest of our lives in Molokai and become 
humble followers of Father Damien." As Mr. Bal- 
four says in the Life of Stevenson, he was as stern with 
his family as he was with himself, and as exacting. 

He talked very little to us of the tragedy of Molo- 
kai, though I could see it lay heavy on his spirits; 
but of the great work begun by Father Damien and 
carried on by his successors he spoke fully. He had 
followed the life of the priest like a detective until 



PREFACE ix 

there seemed nothing more to learn. Mother Mary 
Ann, the mother superior, he could never mention 
without deep emotion. One of the first things he 
did on his return to Honolulu was to send her a 
grand piano for the use of her girls — the girls with 
whom he had played croquet. He also sent toys, 
sewing materials, small tools for the younger chil- 
dren, and other things that I have forgotten. After 
his death a letter was found among his papers of 
which I have only the last few lines. "I cannot 
suppose you remember me, but I won't forget you, 
nor God won't forget you for your kindness to the 
blind white leper at Molokai." 

During my husband's absence I had made every 
preparation for our voyage on the Equator, so but 
little time was lost before we found ourselves on 
board, our sails set for the south. The Equator, 
which had easily lived through the great Samoan 
hurricane, nlade no such phenomenal runs as the 
CascOy but we could trust her, and she had no 
"tricks and ways" that we did not understand. 
We liked the sailors, we loved the ship and her 
captain, so it was with heart-felt regret we said 
farewell in the harbor of Apia after a long and 
perfect cruise. 

After reading the letters that awaited us in Apia, 
we looked over the newspapers. Our indignation 



X PREFACE 

may be imagined when we read in one item that, ow- 
ing to the publication of a letter by a well-known 
Honolulu missionary, depicting Father Damien as a 
dirty old peasant who had contracted leprosy through 
his immoral habits, the project to erect a monument 
to his memory would be abandoned. "I'll not 
believe it," said my husband, "unless I see it with 
my own eyes; for it is too damnable for belief!" 

But see it he did, in spite of his incredulity, for in 
Sydney, a month or two later, the very journal con- 
taining the letter condemnatory of Father Damien 
was among the first we chanced to open. I shall 
never forget my husband's ferocity of indignation, 
his leaping stride as he paced the room holding the 
offending paper at arm's-length before his eyes that 
burned and sparkled with a peculiar flashing light. 
His cousin, Mr. Balfour, in his "Life of Robert 
Louis Stevenson" says: "his eyes . . . when he 
was moved to anger or any fierce emotion seemed 
literally to blaze and glow with a burning light." In 
another moment he disappeared through the door- 
way, and I could hear him, in his own room, pulling 
his chair to the table, and the sound of his inkstand 
being dragged towards him. 

That afternoon he called us together, my son, my 
daughter, and myself, saying that he had something 
serious to lay before us. He went over the circum- 



PREFACE xi 

stances succinctly, and then we three had the in- 
comparable experience of hearing its author read 
aloud the defence of Father Damien while it was 
still red-hot from his indignant soul. 

As we sat, dazed and overcome by emotion, he 
pointed out to us that the subject-matter was libel- 
lous in the highest degree, and the publication of 
the article might cause the loss of his entire substance. 
Without our concurrence he would not take such a 
risk. There was no dissenting voice; how could 
there be? The paper was published with almost 
no change or revision, though afterwards my husband 
said he considered this a mistake. He thought he 
should have waited for his anger to cool when he 
might have been more impersonal and less egotistic. 

The next day he consulted an eminent lawyer, more 
from curiosity than from any other reason. Mr. 
Moses — I think that was his name — was at first in- 
clined to be jocular. I remember his smiling question. 
"Have you called him a hell-hound or an atheist? 
Otherwise there is no libel." But when he looked 
over the manuscript his countenance changed. 
"This is a serious affair," he said; "however, no one 
will publish it for you." In that Mr. Moses was 
right; no one dared publish the pamphlet. But 
that difficulty was soon overcome. My husband 
hired a printer by the day, and the work was rushed 



xii PREFACE 

through. We then, my daughter, my son, and my- 
self, were set to work helping address the pamphlets 
which were scattered far and wide. Father Damien 
was vindicated by a stranger, a man of another 
country and another religion from his own. 

F. V. DE G. S. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface by Mrs. Stevenson, , . v 

Lay Morals, i 

Father Damien, 65 

The Pentland Rising — 

I. The Causes of the Revolt, ......... 91 

II. The Beginning, 94 

III. The March of the Rebels, ......... 98 

IV. Rullion Green, 104 

V. A Record of Blood, ........... 109 

College Papers — 

I. Edinburgh Students in 1824, 117 

II. The Modern Student Considered Generally, . . . 122 

III. Debating Societies, 132 

IV. The Philosophy of Umbrellas, 139 

V. The _ Philosophy of Nomenclature, 145 

Criticisms — 

I. Lord Lytton's "Fables in Song," 153 

II. Salvini's Macbeth, 165 

III. Bagster's "Pilgrim's Progress," .172 

Sketches — 

I. The Satirist, 189 

II. Nuits Blanches, 192 

III. The Wreath of Immortelles, 195 

IV. Nurses, 200 

V. A Character, 204 



xlv CONTENTS 

The Great North Road — page 

I. Nance at the "Green Dragon," 209 

II. In Which Mr. Archer is Installed, 216 

III. Jonathan Holdaway, 226 

IV. Mingling Threads, 231 

V. Life in the Castle, 23S 

VI. The Bad Half-Crown, 243 

VII. The Bleaching-Green, 249 

VIII. The Mail-Guard, • 256 

The Young Chevalier — 

Prologue: The Wine-Scllcr's Wife, ....... 267 

I. The Prince, 279 

Heathercat — 

I. Tracjuairs of Montroymont, ........ 287 

II. Francie, 293 

III. The Hill-End of Drumlowe, » . . 308 



LAY MORALS 



The following chapters of a projected treatise on ethics were 
drafted at Edinburgh in the spring of 1879. They are un- 
revised, and must not be taken as representing, either as to mat- 
ter or form, their authors final thoughts ; but they contain much 
that is essentially characteristic of his mind. 



LAY MORALS 



CHAPTER I 



THE problem of education is twofold: first to 
know, and then to utter. Every one who lives 
any semblance of an inner life thinks more 
nobly and profoundly than he speaks; and the best 
of teachers can impart only broken images of the 
truth which they perceive. Speech which goes from 
one to another between two natures, and, what is 
worse, between two experiences, is doubly relative. 
The speaker buries his meaning; it is for the hearer 
to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, 
is in a dead language until it finds a willing and 
prepared hearer. Such, moreover, is the complexity 
of life, that when we condescend upon details in our 
advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and 
the best of education is to throw out some magnani- 
mous hints. No man was ever so poor that he could 
express all he has in him by words, looks, or actions; 
his true knowledge is eternally incommunicable, for 
it is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom 
comes to him by no process of the mind, but in a 
supreme self-dictation, which keeps varying from 
hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of 
events and circumstances. 

A few men of picked nature, full of faith, courage, 
and contempt for others, try earnestly to set forth as 

3 



4 LAY MORALS 

much as they can grasp of this inner law; but the vast 
majority, when they come to advise the young, must 
be content to retail certain doctrines which have been 
already retailed to them in their own youth. Every 
generation has to educate another which it has 
brought upon the stage. People who readily accept 
the responsibility of parentship, having very differ- 
ent matters in their eye, are apt to feel rueful when 
that responsibility falls due. What are they to tell 
the child about life and conduct, subjects on which 
they have themselves so few and such confused 
opinions? Indeed, I do not know; the least said, 
perhaps, the soonest mended; and yet the child 
keeps asking, and the parent must find some words 
to say in his own defence. Where does he find them ? 
and what are they when found ? 

As a matter of experience, and in nine hundred 
and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, he will in- 
stil into his wide-eyed brat three bad things; the 
terror of public opinion, and, flowing from that as 
a fountain, the desire of wealth and applause. Be- 
sides these, or what might be deduced as corollaries 
from these, he will teach not much else of any effec- 
tive value: some dim notions of divinity, perhaps, 
and book-keeping, and how to walk through a 
quadrille. 

But, you may tell me, the young people are taught 
to be Christians. It may be want of penetration, 
but I have not yet been able to perceive it. As an 
honest man, whatever we teach, and be it good or 
evil, it is not the doctrine of Christ. What he taught 
(and in this he is like all other teachers worthy of the 



LAY MORALS 5 

name) was not a code of rules, but a ruling spirit; 
not truths, but a spirit of truth; not views, but a view. 
What he showed us was an attitude of mind. Tow- 
ards the many considerations on which conduct is 
built, each man stands in a certain relation. He 
takes life on a certain principle. He has a compass 
in his spirit which points in a certain direction. It 
is the attitude, the relation, the point of the compass, 
that is the whole body and gist of what he has to 
teach us; in this, the details are comprehended; 
out of this the specific precepts issue, and by this, 
and this only, can they be explained and applied. 
And thus, to learn aright from any teacher, we must 
first of all, like a historical artist, think ourselves into 
sympathy with his position and, in the technical 
phrase, create his character. A historian confronted 
with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged 
with a part, have but one preoccupation; they must 
search all round and upon every side, and grope for 
some central conception which is to explain and 
justify the most extreme details; until that is found, 
the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and 
the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; 
but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a 
human nature appears, the politician or the stage- 
king is understood from point to point, from end to 
end. This is a degree of trouble which will be 
gladly taken by a very humble artist; but not even 
the terror of eternal fire can teach a business man to 
bend his imagination to such athletic efforts. Yet 
without this, all is vain; until we understand the 
whole, we shall understand none of the parts; and 



6 LAY MORALS 

otherwise we have no more than broken images and 
scattered words; the meaning remains buried; and 
the language in which our prophet speaks to us is 
a dead language in our ears. 

Take a few of Christ's sayings and compare them 
with our current doctrines. 

" Ye cannot,^' he says, ^' serve God and Mammon.''^ 
Cannot? And our whole system is to teach us how 
we can! 

^^The children of this world are wiser in their 
generation than the children of light. ''^ Are they? I 
had been led to understand the reverse: that the 
Christian merchant, for example, prospered exceed- 
ingly in his affairs; that honesty was the best policy; 
that an author of repute had written a conclusive 
treatise "How to make the best of both worlds." 
Of both worlds indeed! Which am I to believe 
then — Christ or the author of repute ? 

"Take no thought for the morrow.^* Ask the Suc- 
cessful Merchant; interrogate your own heart; and 
you will have to admit that this is not only a silly but 
an immoral position. All we believe, all we hope, 
all we honour in ourselves or our contemporaries, 
stands condemned in this one sentence, or, if you take 
the other view, condemns the sentence as unwise and 
inhumane. We are not then of the ''same mind that 
was in Christ." We disagree with Christ. Either 
Christ meant nothing, or else he or we must be in 
the wrong. Well says Thoreau, speaking of some 
texts from the New Testament, and finding a strange 
echo of another style which the reader may recognise : 
" Let but one of these sentences be rightly read from 



LAY MORALS 7 

any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left 
one stone of that meeting-house upon another." 

It may be objected that these are what are called 
"hard sayings"; and that a man, or an education, 
may be very sufficiently Christian although it leave 
some of these sayings upon one side. But this is a 
very gross delusion. Although truth is difficult to 
state, it is both easy and agreeable to receive, and 
the mind runs out to meet it ere the phrase be done. 
The universe, in relation to what any man can say 
of it, is plain, patent, and staringly comprehensible. 
In itself, it is a great and travailing ocean, unsounded, 
unvoyageable, an eternal mystery to man; or, let us 
say, it is a monstrous and impassable mountain, one 
side of which, and a few near slopes and foot-hills, 
we can dimly study with these mortal eyes. But 
what any man can say of it, even in his highest utter- 
ance, must have relation to this little and plain cor- 
ner, which is no less visible to us than to him. We 
are looking on the same map; it will go hard if we 
cannot follow the demonstration. The longest and 
most abstruse flight of a philosopher becomes clear 
and shallow, in the flash of a moment, when we 
suddenly perceive the aspect and drift of his inten- 
tion. The longest argument is but a finger pointed; 
once we get our own finger rightly parallel, and we see 
what the man meant, whether it be a new star or an 
old street-lamp. And briefly, if a saying is hard to 
understand, it is because we are thinking of some- 
thing else. 

But to be a true disciple is to think of the same 
things as our prophet, and to think of different 



8 LAY MORALS 

things in the same order. To be of the same mind 
with another is to see all things in the same perspec- 
tive; it is not to agree in a few indifferent matters 
near at hand and not much debated; it is to follow 
him in his farthest flights, to see the force of his hyper- 
boles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision 
that whatever he may express, your eyes will light 
at once on the original, that whatever he may see to 
declare, your mind will at once accept. You do 
not belong to the school of any philosopher because 
you agree with him that theft is, on the whole, ob- 
jectionable, or that the sun is overhead at noon. It 
is by the hard sayings that discipleship is tested. We 
are all agreed about the middling and indifferent 
parts of knowledge and morality; even the most 
soaring spirits too often take them tamely upon 
trust. But the man, the philosopher, or the moral- 
ist, does not stand upon these chance adhesions; 
and the purpose of any system looks towards those 
extreme points where it steps valiantly beyond tra- 
dition and returns with some covert hint of things 
outside. Then only can you be certain that the 
words are not words of course, nor mere echoes of 
the past; then only are you sure that if he be indi- 
cating anything at all, it is a star and not a street- 
lamp; then only do you touch the heart of the mystery, 
since it was for these that the author wrote his book. 
Now, every now and then, and indeed surprisingly 
often, Christ finds a word that transcends all com- 
monplace morality; every now and then he quits 
the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and 
throws out a pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; 



LAY MORALS 9 

for it is only by some bold poetry of thought that 
men can be strung up above the level of every-day 
conceptions to take a broader look upon experience 
or accept some higher principle of conduct. To a 
man who is of the same mind that was in Christ, 
who stands at some centre not too far from his, and 
looks at the world and conduct from some not dissimi- 
lar or, at least, not opposing attitude — or, shortly, to 
a man who is of Christ's philosophy — every such 
saying should come home with a thrill of joy and 
corroboration; he should feel each one below his 
feet as another sure foundation in the flux of time 
and chance; each should be another proof that in 
the torrent of the years and generations, where doc- 
trines and great armaments and empires are swept 
away and swallowed, he stands immovable, holding 
by the eternal stars. But alas! at this juncture of 
the ages it is not so with us; on each and every such 
occasion our whole fellowship of Christians falls back 
in disapproving wonder and implicitly denies the 
saying. Christians! the farce is impudently broad. 
Let us stand up in the sight of heaven and confess. 
The ethics that we hold are those of Benjamin 
Franklin. Honesty is the best policy, is perhaps a 
hard saying; it is certainly one by which a wise man 
of these days will not too curiously direct his steps; 
but I think it shows a glimmer of meaning to even 
our most dimmed intelligences; I think we perceive a 
principle behind it; I think, without hyperbole, we 
are of the same mind that was in Benjamin Franklin. 



CHAPTER II 

But, I may be told, we teach the ten command- 
ments, where a world of morals lies condensed, the 
very pith and epitome of all ethics and religion; and 
a young man with these precepts engraved upon his 
mind must follow after profit with some conscience 
and Christianity of method. A man cannot go very 
far astray who neither dishonours his parents, nor 
kills, nor commits adultery, nor steals, nor bears 
false witness; for these things, rightly thought out, 
cover a vast field of duty. 

Alas! what is a precept? It is at best an illustra- 
tion; it is case law at the best which can be learned 
by precept. The letter is not only dead, but killing; 
the spirit which underlies, and cannot be uttered, 
alone is true and helpful. This is trite to sickness; 
but familiarity has a cunning disenchantment; in a 
day or two she can steal all beauty from the moun- 
tain-tops; and the most startling words begin to fall 
dead upon the ear after several repetitions. If you 
see a thing too often, you no longer see it; if you hear 
a thing too often, you no longer hear it. Our atten- 
tion requires to be surprised; and to carry a fort by 
assault, or to gain a thoughtful hearing from the ruck 
of mankind, are feats of about an equal difficulty 
and must be tried by not dissimilar means. The 
whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common 
run of hearers; it has become mere words of course; 



LAY MORALS ii 

and the parson may bawl himself scarlet and beat 
the pulpit like a thing possessed, but his hearers will 
continue to nod; they are strangely at peace; they 
know all he has to say; ring the old bell as you choose, 
it is still the old bell and it cannot startle their com- 
posure. And so with this by-word about the letter 
and the spirit. It is quite true, no doubt; but it has 
no meaning in the world to any man of us. Alas! 
it has just this meaning, and neither more nor less: 
that while the spirit is true, the letter is eternally 
false. 

The shadow of a great oak lies abroad upon the 
ground at noon, perfect, clear, and stable like the 
earth. But let a man set himself to mark out the 
boundary with cords and pegs, and were he never 
so nimble and never so exact, what with the multi- 
plicity of the leaves and the progresson of the shadow 
as it flees before the travelling sun, long ere he has 
made the circuit the whole figure will have changed. 
Life may be compared, not to a single tree, but to a 
great and complicated forest; circumstance is more 
swiftly changing than a shadow, language much more 
inexact than the tools of a surveyor; from day to day 
the trees fall and are renewed; the very essences are 
fleeting as we look; and the whole world of leaves is 
swinging tempest-tossed among the winds of time. 
Look now for your shadows. O man of formulae, is 
this a place for you ? Have you fitted the spirit to a 
single case ? Alas, in the cycle of the ages when shall 
such another be proposed for the judgment of man ? 
Now when the sun shines and the winds blow, the 
wood is filled with an innumerable multitude of 



12 LAY MORALS 

shadows, tumultuously tossed and changing; and 
at every gust the whole carpet leaps and becomes 
new. Can you or your heart say more? 

Look back now, for a moment, on your own brief 
experience of life; and although you lived it feelingly 
in your own person, and had every step of conduct 
burned in by pains and joys upon your memory, tell 
me what definite lesson does experience hand on 
from youth to manhood, or from both to age ? The 
settled tenor which first strikes the eye is but the 
shadow of a delusion. This is gone; that never 
truly was; and you yourself are altered beyond 
recognition. Times and men and circumstances 
change about your changing character, with a speed 
of which no earthly hurricane affords an image. 
What was the best yesterday, is it still the best in this 
changed theatre of a to-morrow? Will your own 
Past truly guide you in your own violent and unex- 
pected Future? And if this be questionable, with 
what humble, with what hopeless eyes, should we 
not watch other men driving beside us on their un- 
known careers, seeing with unlike eyes, impelled by 
different gales, doing and suffering in another sphere 
of things? 

And as the authentic clue to such a labyrinth and 
change of scene, do you offer me these twoscore 
words ? these five bald prohibitions ? For the moral 
precepts are no more than five; the first four deal 
rather with matters of observance than of conduct; 
the tenth. Thou shall nol covet, stands upon another 
basis, and shall be spoken of ere long. The Jews, 
to whom they were first given, in the course of years 



LAY MORALS 13 

began to find these precepts insufficient; and made 
an addition of no less than six hundred and fifty- 
others! They hoped to make a pocket-book of ref- 
erence on morals, which should stand to life in some 
such relation, say, as Hoyle stands in to the scientific 
game of whist. The comparison is just, and con- 
demns the design; for those who play by rule will 
never be more than tolerable players; and you and 
I would like to play our game in life to the noblest 
and the most divine advantage. Yet if the Jews took 
a petty huckstering view of conduct, what view do 
we take ourselves, who callously leave youth to go 
forth into the enchanted forest, full of spells and dire 
chimeras, with no guidance more complete than is 
afforded by these five precepts? 

Honour thy father and thy mother. Yes, but does 
that mean to obey ? and if so, how long and how far ? 
Thou shalt not kill. Yet the very intention and pur- 
port of the prohibition may be best fulfilled by kill- 
ing. Thou shalt not commit adultery. But some 
of the ugliest adulteries are committed in the bed of 
marriage and under the sanction of religion and law. 
Thou shalt not hear false witness. How? by speech 
or by silence also? or even by a smile? Thou shalt 
not steal. Ah, that indeed! But what is to steal? 

To steal? It is another word to be construed; 
and who is to be our guide? The police will give 
us one construction, leaving the word only that least 
minimum of meaning without which society would 
fall in pieces; but surely we must take some higher 
sense than this; surely we hope more than a bare 
subsistence for mankind; surely we wish mankind 



14 LAY MORALS 

to prosper and go on from strength to strength, and 
ourselves to hve rightly in the eye of some more ex- 
acting potentate than a policeman. The approval 
or the disapproval of the police must be eternally in- 
different to a man who is both valorous and good. 
There is extreme discomfort, but no shame, in the 
condemnation of the law. The law represents that 
modicum of morality which can be squeezed out of 
the ruck of mankind; but what is that to me, who 
aim higher and seek to be my own more stringent 
judge? I observe with pleasure that no brave man 
has ever given a rush for such considerations. The 
Japanese have a nobler and more sentimental feel- 
ing for this social bond into which we all are born 
when we come into the world, and whose comforts 
and protection we all indifferently share throughout 
our lives: — but even to them, no more than to our 
Western saints and heroes, does the law of the state 
supersede the higher law of duty. Without hesita- 
tion and without remorse, they transgress the stiffest 
enactments rather than abstain from doing right. 
But the accidental superior duty being thus fulfilled, 
they at once return in allegiance to the common duty 
of all citizens; and hasten to denounce themselves; 
and value at an equal rate their just crime and their 
equally just submission to its punishment. 

The evading of the police will not long satisfy an 
active conscience or a thoughtful head. But to show 
you how one or the other may trouble a man, and 
what a vast extent of frontier is left unridden by this 
invaluable eighth commandment, let me tell you a 
few pages out of a young man's Hfe. 



LAY MORALS 15 

He was a friend of mine; a young man like others; 
generous, flighty, as variable as youth itself, but al- 
ways with some high motions and on the search for 
higher thoughts of life. I should tell you at once 
that he thoroughly agrees with the eighth command- 
ment. But he got hold of some unsettling works, 
the New Testament among others, and this loosened 
his views of life and led him into many perplexities. 
As he was the son of a man in a certain position, and 
well off, my friend had enjoyed from the first the ad- 
vantages of education, nay, he had been kept alive 
through a sickly childhood by constant watchfulness, 
comforts, and change of air; for all of which he was 
indebted to his father's wealth. 

At college he met other lads more diligent than 
himself, who followed the plough in summer-time to 
pay their college fees in winter; and this inequality 
struck him with some force. He was at that age of 
a conversable temper, and insatiably curious in the 
aspects of life; and he spent much of his time scraping 
acquaintance with all classes of man- and woman- 
kind. In this way he came upon many depressed 
ambitions, and many intelligences stunted for want 
of opportunity; and this also struck him. He began 
to perceive that life was a handicap upon strange, 
wrong-sided principles; and not, as he had been told, 
a fair and equal race. He began to tremble that he 
himself had been unjustly favoured, when he saw all 
the avenues of wealth and power and comfort closed 
against so many of his superiors and equals, and 
held unwearyingly open before so idle, so desultory, 
and so dissolute a being as himself. There sat a 



i6 LAY MORALS 

youth beside him on the college benches, who had 
only one shirt to his back, and, at intervals sufficiently 
far apart, must stay at home to have it washed. It 
was my friend's principle to stay away as often as he 
dared; for I fear he was no friend to learning. But 
there was something that came home to him sharply, 
in this fellow who had to give over study till his shirt 
was washed, and the scores of others who had never 
an opportunity at all. // one of these could take his 
place, he thought; and the thought tore away a 
bandage from his eyes. He was eaten by the shame 
of his discoveries, and despised himself^ as an un- 
worthy favourite and a creature of the backstairs 
of Fortune. He could no longer see without con- 
fusion one of these brave young fellows battling 
up hill against adversity. Had he not filched that 
fellow's birthright? At best was he not coldly 
profiting by the injustice of society, and greedily de- 
vouring stolen goods ? The money, indeed, belonged 
to his father, who had worked, and thought, and 
given up his liberty to earn it; but by what justice 
could the money belong to my friend, who had, as 
yet, done nothing but help to squander it? A more 
sturdy honesty, joined to a more even and impartial 
temperament, would have drawn from these con- 
siderations a new force of industry, that this equiv- 
ocal position might be brought as swiftly as possible 
to an end, and some good services to mankind justify 
the appropriation of expense. It was not so with my 
friend, who was only unsettled and discouraged, and 
filled full of that trumpeting anger with which young 
men regard injustices in the first blush of youth; 



LAY MORALS 17 

although in a few years they will tamely acquiesce 
in their existence, and knowingly profit by their 
complications. Yet all this while he suffered many 
indignant pangs. And once, when he put on his 
boots, like any other unripe donkey, to run away 
from home, it was his best consolation that he was 
now, at a single plunge, to free himself from the 
responsibility of this wealth that was not his, and do 
battle equally against his fellows in the warfare of 
life. 

Some time after this, falling into ill health, he was 
sent at great expense to a more favourable climate; 
and then I think his perplexities were thickest. 
When he thought of all the other young men of singu- 
lar promise, upright, good, the prop of families, who 
must remain at home to die, and with all their pos- 
sibilities be lost to life and mankind; and how he, 
by one more unmerited favour, was chosen out 
from all these others to survive; he felt as if there 
were no life, no labour, no devotion of soul and 
body, that could repay and justify these partialities. 
A religious lady, to whom he communicated these 
reflections, could see no force in them whatever. 
"It was God's will," said she. But he knew it was 
by God's will that Joan of Arc was burnt at Rouen, 
which cleared neither Bedford nor Bishop Cauchon; 
and again, by God's will that Christ was crucified 
outside Jerusalem, which excused neither the ran- 
cour of the priests nor the timidity of Pilate. He 
knew, moreover, that although the possibility of this 
favour he was now enjoying issued from his circum- 
stances, its acceptance was the act of his own will; 



1 8 LAY MORALS 

and he had accepted it greedily, longing for rest and 
sunshine. And hence this allegation of God's provi- 
dence did little to relieve his scruples. I promise 
you he had a very troubled mind. And I would not 
laugh if I were you, though while he was thus ma- 
king mountains out of what you think mole-hills, he 
were still (as perhaps he was) contentedly practising 
many other things that to you seem black as hell. 
Every man is his own judge and mountain-guide 
through life. There is an old story of a mote and a 
beam, apparently not true, but worthy perhaps of 
some consideration. I should, if I were you, give 
some consideration to these scruples of his, and if I 
were he, I should do the like by yours; for it is not 
unlikely that there may be something under both. 
In the meantime you must hear how my friend acted. 
Like many invalids, he supposed that he would die. 
Now should he die, he saw no means of repaying 
this huge loan which, by the hands of his father, 
mankind had advanced him for his sickness. In that 
case it would be lost money. So he determined that 
the advance should be as small as possible; and, 
so long as he continued to doubt his recovery, lived 
in an upper room, and grudged himself all but neces- 
saries. But so soon as he began to perceive a change 
for the better, he felt justified in spending more 
freely, to speed and brighten his return to health, 
and trusted in the future to lend a help to mankind, 
as mankind, out of its treasury, had lent a help to 
him. 

I do not say but that my friend was a little too curi- 
ous and partial in his view; nor thought too much of 



LAY MORALS 19 

himself and too little of his parents; but I do say 
that here are some scruples which tormented my 
friend in his youth, and still, perhaps, at odd times 
give him a prick in the midst of his enjoyments, and 
which after all have some foundation in justice, and 
point, in their confused way, to some more honour- 
able honesty within the reach of man. And at least, 
is not this an unusual gloss upon the eighth com- 
mandment? And what sort of comfort, guidance, 
or illumination did that precept afford my friend 
throughout these contentions? "Thou shalt not 
steal." With all my heart! But am I stealing? 

The truly quaint materialism of our view of life 
disables us from pursuing any transaction to an end. 
You can make no one understand that his bargain 
is anything more than a bargain, whereas in point 
of fact it is a link in the policy of mankind, and 
either a good or an evil to the world. We have a 
sort of blindness which prevents us from seeing any- 
thing but sovereigns. If one man agrees to give an- 
other so many shillings for so many hours' work, 
and then wilfully gives him a certain proportion of 
the price in bad money and only the remainder in 
good, we can see with half an eye that this man is a 
thief. But if the other spends a certain proportion 
of the hours in smoking a pipe of tobacco, and a 
certain other proportion in looking at the sky, or 
the clock, or trying to recall an air, or in meditation 
on his own past adventures, and only the remainder 
in downright work such as he is paid to do, is he, be- 
cause the theft is one of time and not of money, — 
is he any the less a thief? The one gave a bad 



20 LAY MORALS 

shilling, the other an imperfect hour; but both broke 
the bargain, and each is a thief. In piece-work, 
which is what most of us do, the case is none the 
less plain for being even less, material. If you forge 
a bad knife, you have wasted some of mankind's 
iron, and then, with unrivalled cynicism, you pocket 
some of mankind's money for your trouble. Is 
there any man so blind who cannot see that this is 
theft? Again, if you carelessly cultivate a farm, 
you have been playing fast and loose with man- 
kind's resources against hunger; there will be less 
bread in consequence, and for lack of that bread 
somebody will die next winter: a grim consideration. 
And you must not hope to shuffle out of blame be- 
cause you got less money for your less quantity of 
bread; for although a theft be partly punished, it is 
none the less a theft for that. You took the farm 
against competitors; there were others ready to 
shoulder the responsibility and be answerable for 
the tale of loaves; but it was you who took it. By 
the act you came under a tacit bargain with man- 
kind to cultivate that farm with your best endeavour; 
you were under no superintendence, you were on 
parole; and you have broken your bargain, and to all 
who look closely, and yourself among the rest if you 
have moral eyesight, you are a thief. Or take the 
case of men of letters. Every piece of work which is 
not as good as you can make it, which you have 
palmed off imperfect, meagrely thought, niggardly 
in execution, upon mankind who is your paymas- 
ter on parole and in a sense your pupil, every hasty 
or slovenly or untrue performance, should rise up 



LAY MORALS 21 

against you in the court of your own heart and 
condemn you for a thief. Have you a salary? If 
you trifle with your health, and so render yourself 
less capable for duty, and still touch and still greedily 
pocket the emolument — what are you but a thief ? 
Have you double accounts? do you by any time- 
honoured juggle, deceit, or ambiguous process, gain 
more from those who deal with you than if you were 
bargaining and dealing face to* face in front of God ? 
— What are you but a thief ? Lastly, if you fill an 
office, or produce an article, which, in your heart of 
hearts, you think a delusion and a fraud upon man- 
kind, and still draw your salary and go through the 
sham manoeuvres of this office, or still book your 
profits and keep on flooding the world with these 
injurious goods ? — though you were old, and bald, 
and the first at church, and a baronet, what are you 
but a thief? These may seem hard words and mere 
curiosities of the intellect, in an age when the spirit 
of honesty is so sparingly cultivated that all business 
is conducted upon lies and so-called customs of the 
trade, that not a man bestows two thoughts on the 
utility or honourableness of his pursuit. I would 
say less if I thought less. But looking to my own rea- 
son and the right of things, I can only avow that I 
am a thief myself, and that I passionately suspect 
my neighbours of the same guilt. 

Where did you hear that it was easy to be honest ? 
Do you find that in your Bible? Easy? It is easy 
to be an ass and follow the multitude like a blind, 
besotted bull in a stampede; and that, I am well 
aware, is what you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being 



22 LAY MORALS 

honest. But it will not bear the stress of time nor the 
scrutiny of conscience. Even before the lowest of 
all tribunals — before a court of law, whose business 
it is, not to keep men right, or within a thousand 
miles of right, but to withhold them from going so 
tragically wrong that they will pull down the whole 
jointed fabric of society by their misdeeds — even 
before a court of law, as we begin to see in these last 
days, our easy view of following at each other's tails, 
alike to good and evil, is beginning to be reproved and 
punished, and declared no honesty at all, but open 
theft and swindling; and simpletons who have gone 
on through life with a quiet conscience may learn 
suddenly, from the lips of a judge, that the custom 
of the trade may be a custom of the devil. You 
thought it was easy to be honest. Did you think it 
was easy to be just and kind and truthful? Did 
you think the whole duty of aspiring man was as 
simple as a hornpipe? and you could walk through 
life like a gentleman and a hero, with no more con- 
cern than it takes to go to church or to address a 
circular? And yet all this time you had the eighth 
commandment! and, what makes it richer, you 
would not have broken it for the world! 

The truth is, that these commandments by them- 
selves are of little use in private judgment. If com- 
pression is what you want, you have their whole 
spirit compressed into the golden rule; and yet 
there expressed with more significance, since the 
law is there spiritually and not materially stated. 
And in truth, four out of these ten commands, from 
the sixth to the ninth, are rather legal than ethical. 



LAY MORALS 23 

The police court is their proper home. A magistrate 
cannot tell whether you love your neighbor as your- 
self, but he can tell more or less whether you have 
murdered, or stolen, or committed adultery, or held 
up your hand and testified to that which was not; 
and these things, for rough practical tests, are as 
good as can be found. And perhaps, therefore, the 
best condensation of the Jewish moral law is in the 
maxims of the priests, "neminem laedere" and 
"suum cuique tribunere." But all this granted, it 
becomes only the more plain that they are inadequate 
in the sphere of personal morality; that while they 
tell the magistrate roughly when to punish, they can 
never direct an anxious sinner what to do. 

Only Polonius, or the like solemn sort of ass, can 
offer us a succinct proverb by way of advice, and not 
burst out blushing in our faces. We grant them one 
and all, and for all that they are worth; it is some- 
thing above and beyond that we desire. Christ 
was in general a great enemy to such a way of teach- 
ing; we rarely find him meddling with any of these 
plump comrhands but it was to open them out, and 
lift his hearers from the letter to the spirit. For 
morals are a personal affair; in the war of righteous- 
ness every man fights for his own hand; all the six 
hundred precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my 
private judgment; my magistracy of myself is an 
indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for 
the time and case. The moralist is not a judge of 
appeal, but an advocate who pleads at my tribunal. 
He has to show not the law, but that the law ap- 
plies. Can he convince me ? then he gains the cause. 



24 LAY MORALS 

And thus you find Christ giving various counsels to 
varying people, and often jealously careful to avoid 
definite precept. Is he asked, for example, to 
divide a heritage? He refuses: and the best advice 
that he will offer is but a paraphrase of that tenth 
commandment which figures so strangely among 
the rest. Take heed, and beware of covetoiisness. 
If you complain that this is vague, I have failed to 
carry you along with me in my argument. For no 
definite precept can be more than an illustration, 
though its truth were resplendent like the sun, and 
it was announced from heaven by the voice of God. 
And life is so intricate and changing, that perhaps 
not twenty times, or perhaps not twice in the ages, 
shall we find that nice consent of circumstances to 
which alone it can apply. 



CHAPTER III 

Although the world and life have in a sense be- 
come commonplace to our experience, it is but in an 
external torpor; the true sentiment slumbers with- 
in us; and we have but to reflect on ourselves or 
our surroundings to rekindle our astonishment. No 
length of habit can blunt our first surprise. Of the 
world I have but little to say in this connection; a 
few strokes shall suffice. We inhabit a dead ember 
swimming wide in the blank of space, dizzily spin- 
ning as it swims, and lighted up from several million 
miles away by a more horrible hell-fire than was 
ever conceived by the theological imagination. Yet 
the dead ember is a green, commodious dwelling- 
place; and the reverberation of this hell-fire ripens 
flower and fruit and mildly warms us on summer 
eves upon the lawn. Far off on all hands other dead 
embers, other flaming suns, wheel and race in the 
apparent void; the nearest is out of call, the farthest 
so far that the heart sickens in the effort to conceive 
the distance. Shipwrecked seamen on the deep, 
though they bestride but the truncheon of a boom, 
are safe and near at home compared with mankind 
on its bullet'. Even to us who have known no other 
it seems a strange, if not an appalling, place of resi- 
dence. 

But far stranger is the resident, man, a creature 
compact of wonders that, after centuries of custom, 

25 



26 LAY MORALS 

is still wonderful to himself. He inhabits a body 
which he is continually oudiving, discarding, and 
renewing. Food and sleep, by an unknown al- 
chemy, restore his spirits and the freshness of his 
countenance. Hair grows on him like grass; his 
eyes, his brain, his sinews, thirst for action; he en- 
joys to see and touch and hear, to partake the sun 
and wind, to sit down and intently ponder on his 
astonishing attributes and situation, to rise up and 
run, to perform the strange and revolting round of 
physical functions. The sight of a flower, the note 
of a bird, will often move him deeply; yet he looks 
unconcerned on the impassable distances and por- 
tentous bonfires of the universe. He comprehends, 
he designs, he tames nature, rides the sea, ploughs, 
climbs the air in a balloon, makes vast inquiries, be- 
gins interminable labours, joins himself into federa- 
tions and populous cities, spends his days to deliver 
the ends of the earth or to benefit unborn posterity; 
and yet knows himself for a piece of unsurpassed 
fragility and the creature of a few days. His sight, 
which conducts him, which takes notice of the far- 
thest stars, which is miraculous in every way and a 
thing defying explanation or belief, is yet lodged in a 
piece of jelly, and can be extinguished with a touch. 
His heart, which all through life so indomitably, so 
athletically labours, is but a capsule, and may be 
stopped with a pin. His whole body, for all its 
savage energies, its leaping and its winged desires, 
may yet be tamed and conquered by a draught of air 
or a sprinkling of cold dew. What he calls death, 
which is the seeming arrest of everything, and the 



LAY MORALS 27 

ruin and hateful transformation of the visible body, 
lies in wait for him outwardly in a thousand accidents, 
and grows up in secret diseases from within. He is 
still learning to be a man when his faculties are al- 
ready beginning to decline; he has not yet understood 
himself or his position before he inevitably dies. 
And yet this mad, chimerical creature can take no 
thought of his last end, lives as though he were eter- 
nal, plunges with his vulnerable body into the shock 
of war, and daily affronts death with unconcern. 
He cannot take a step without pain or pleasure. His 
life is a tissue of sensations, which he distinguishes 
as they seem to come more directly from himself or 
his surroundings. He is conscious of himself as a 
joyer or a sufferer, as that which craves, chooses, and 
is satisfied; conscious of his surroundings as it were 
of an inexhaustible purveyor, the source of aspects, 
inspirations, wonders, cruel knocks and transporting 
caresses. Thus he goes on his way, stumbling among 
delights and agonies. 

Matter is a far-fetched theory, and materialism is 
without a ro6t in man. To him everything is impor- 
tant in the degree to which it moves him. The tele- 
graph wires and posts, the electricity speeding from 
clerk to clerk, the clerks, the glad or sorrowful im- 
port of the message, and the paper on which it is 
finally brought to him at home, are all equally facts, 
all equally exist for man. A word or a thought can 
wound him as acutely as a knife of steel. If he thinks 
he is loved, he will rise up and glory to himself, al- 
though he be in a distant land and short of necessary 
bread. Does he think he is not loved ? — he may 



28 LAY MORALS 

have the woman at his beck, and there is not a joy 
for him in all the world. Indeed, if we are to make 
any account of this figment of reason, the distinc- 
tion between material and immaterial, we shall con- 
clude that the life of each man as an individual is im- 
material, although the continuation and prospects of 
mankind as a race turn upon material conditions. 
The physical business of each man's body is trans- 
acted for him; like a Sybarite, he has attentive 
valets in his own viscera; he breathes, he sweats, he 
digests without an effort, or so much as a consenting 
volition; for the most part he even eats, not with a 
wakeful consciousness, but as it were between two 
thoughts. His life is centred among other and 
more important considerations; touch him in his 
honour or his love, creatures of the imagination 
which attach him to mankind or to an individual 
man or woman; cross him in his piety which connects 
his soul with heaven; and he turns from his food, he 
loathes his breath, and with a magnanimous emotion 
cuts the knots of his existence and frees himself at a 
blow from the web of pains and pleasures. 

It follows that man is twofold at least; that he is 
not a rounded and autonomous empire; but that in 
the same body with him there dwell other powers, 
tributary but independent. If I now behold one 
walking in a garden, curiously coloured and illumi- 
nated by the sun, digesting his food with elaborate 
chemistry, breathing, circulating blood, directing 
himself by the sight of his eyes, accommodating his 
body by a thousand delicate balancings to the wind 
and the uneven surface of the path, and all the time, 



LAY MORALS 29 

perhaps, with his mind engaged about America, or 
the dog-star, or the attributes of God — what am I 
to say, or how am I to describe the thing I see ? Is 
that truly a man, in the rigorous meaning of the 
word ? or is it not a man and something else ? What, 
then, are we to count the centre-bit and axle of a being 
so variously compounded ? It is "a question much de- 
bated. Some read his history in a certain intricacy 
of nerve and the success of successive digestions; 
others find him an exiled piece of heaven blown upon 
and determined by the breath of God; and both 
schools of theorists will scream like scalded children 
at a word of doubt. Yet either of these views, how- 
ever plausible, is beside the question; either may be 
right; and I care not; I ask a more particular an- 
swer, and to a more immediate point. What is 
the man ? There is Something that was before hun- 
ger and that remains behind after a meal. It may 
or may not be engaged in any given act or passion, 
but when it is, it changes, heightens, and sanctifies. 
Thus it is not engaged in lust, where satisfaction ends 
the chapter"; and it is engaged in love, where no sat- 
isfaction can blunt the edge of the desire, and where 
age, sickness, or alienation may deface what was 
desirable without diminishing the sentiment. This 
something, which is the man, is a permanence which 
abides through the vicissitudes of passion, now over- 
whelmed and now triumphant, now unconscious of 
itself in the immediate distress of appetite or pain, 
now rising unclouded above all. So, to the man, his 
own central self fades and grows clear again amid 
the tumult of the senses, like a revolving Pharos in 



30 LAY MORALS 

the night. It is forgotten; it is hid, it seems, for 
ever; and yet in the next calm hour he shall be- 
hold himself once more, shining and unmoved 
among changes and storm. 

Mankind, in the sense of the creeping mass that is 
born and eats, that generates and dies, is but the 
aggregate of the outer and lower sides of man. This 
inner consciousness, this lantern alternately obscured 
and shining, to and by which the individual exists 
and must order his conduct, is something special to 
himself and not common to the race. His joys de- 
light, his sorrows wound him, according as this is 
interested or indifferent in the affair; according as 
they arise in an imperial war or in a broil conducted 
by the tributary chieftains of the mind. He may 
lose all, and this not suffer; he may lose what is ma- 
terially a trifle, and this leap in his bosom with a 
cruel pang. I do not speak of it to hardened theor- 
ists: the living man knows keenly what it is I mean. 

" Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something 
better and more divine than the things which cause 
the various effects, and, as it were, pull thee by the 
strings. What is that now in thy mind? is it fear, 
or suspicion, or desire, or anything of that kind?" 
Thus far Marcus Aurelius, in one of the most nota- 
ble passages in any book. Here is a question worthy 
to be answered. What is in thy mind ? What is the 
utterance of your inmost self when, in a quiet hour, 
it can be heard intelligibly ? It is something beyond 
the compass of your thinking, inasmuch as it is your- 
self; but is it not of a higher spirit than you had 
dreamed between whiles, and erect above all base 



LAY MORALS 31 

considerations? This soul seems hardly touched 
with our infirmities; we can find in it certainly no 
fear, suspicion, or desire, we are only conscious — 
and that as though we read it in the eyes of some one 
else — of a great and unqualified readiness. A readi- 
ness to what ? to pass over and look beyond the ob- 
jects of desire and fear, for something else. And 
this something else? this something which is apart 
from desire and fear, to which all the kingdoms of 
the world and the immediate death of the body are 
alike indifferent and beside the point, and which yet 
regards conduct — ■ by what name are we to call it ? 
It may be the love of God; or it may be an inherited 
(and certainly well-concealed) instinct to preserve 
self and propagate the race; I am not, for the mo- 
ment, averse to either theory; but it will save time 
to call it righteousness. By so doing I intend no 
subterfuge to beg a question; I am indeed ready, and 
more than willing, to accept the rigid consequence, 
and lay aside, as far as the treachery of the reason 
will permit, all former meanings attached to the 
word righteousness. What is right is that for which 
a man's central self is ever ready to sacrifice immedi- 
ate or distant interests; what is wrong is what the 
central self discards or rejects as incompatible with 
the fixed design of righteousness. 

To make this admission is to lay aside all hope of 
definition. That which is right upon this theory is 
intimately dictated to each man by himself, but can 
never be rigorously set forth in language, and never, 
above all, imposed upon another. The conscience 
has, then, a vision like that of the eyes, which is in- 



32 LAY MORALS 

communicable, and for the most part illuminates 
none but its possessor. When many people perceive 
the same or any cognate facts, they agree upon a 
word as symbol; and hence we have such words as 
tree^ star, love, honour , or death; hence also we have 
this word right, which, hke the others, we all under- 
stand, most of us understand differently, and none 
can express succinctly otherwise. Yet even on the 
straitest view, we can make some steps towards com- 
prehension of our own superior thoughts. For it is 
an incredible and most bewildering fact that a man, 
through life, is on variable terms with himself; he is 
aware of tiffs and reconciliations; the intimacy is at 
times almost suspended, at times it is renewed again 
with joy. As we said before, his inner self or soul 
appears to him by successive revelations, and is fre- 
quently obscured. It is from a study of these al- 
ternations that we can alone hope to discover, even 
dimly, what seems right and what seems wrong to 
this veiled prophet of ourself. 

All that is in the man in the larger sense, what we 
call impression as well as what we call intuition, so far 
as my argument looks, we must accept. It is not 
wrong to desire food, or exercise, or beautiful sur- 
roundings, or the love of sex, or interest which is the 
food of the mind. All these are craved; all these 
should be craved; to none of these in itself does 
the soul demur; where there comes an undeniable 
want, we recognise a demand of nature. Yet we 
know that these natural demands may be super- 
seded; for the demands which are common to man- 
kind make but a shadowy consideration in compari- 



LAY MORALS 33 

son to the demands of the individual soul. Food 
is almost the first prerequisite; and yet a high char- 
acter will go without food to the ruin and death of 
the body rather than gain it in a manner which 
the spirit disavows. Pascal laid aside mathematics; 
Origen doctored his body with a knife; every day 
some one is thus mortifying his dearest interests 
and desires, and, in Christ's words, entering maim 
into the kingdom of heaven. This is to supersede 
the lesser and less harmonious affections by renun- 
ciation; and though by this ascetic path we may 
get to heaven, we cannot get thither a whole and 
perfect man. But there is another way, to super- 
sede them by reconciliation, in which the soul and 
all the faculties and senses pursue a common route 
and share in one desire. Thus, man is tormented 
by a very imperious physical desire; it spoils his 
rest, it is not to be denied; the doctors will tell you, 
not I, how it is a physical need, like the want of food 
or slumber. In the satisfaction of this desire, as 
it first appears, the soul sparingly takes part; nay, 
it oft unsparingly regrets and disapproves the sat- 
isfaction. But let the man learn to love a woman 
as far as he is capable of love; and for this random 
affection of the body there is substituted a steady 
determination, a consent of all his powers and facul- 
ties, which supersedes, adopts, and commands the 
other. The desire survives, strengthened, perhaps, 
but taught obedience, and changed in scope and char- 
acter. Life is no longer a tale of betrayals and re- 
grets; for the man now lives as a whole; his con- 
sciousness now moves on uninterrupted like a river; 



34 LAY MORALS 

through all the extremes and ups and downs of pas- 
sion, he remains approvingly conscious of himself. 

Now to me, this seems a type of that rightness 
which the soul demands. It demands that we shall 
not live alternately with our opposing tendencies in 
continual seesaw of passion and disgust, but seek 
some path on which the tendencies shall no longer 
oppose, but serve each other to a common end. It 
demands that we shall not pursue broken ends, but 
great and comprehensive purposes, in which soul 
and body may unite like notes in a harmonious chord. 
That were indeed a way of peace and pleasure, that 
were indeed a heaven upon earth. It does not de- 
mand, however, or, to speak in measure, it does not 
demand of me, that I should starve my appetites for 
no purpose under heaven but as a purpose in itself; 
or, in a weak despair, pluck out the eye that I have 
not yet learned to guide and enjoy with wisdom. 
The soul demands unity of purpose, not the dismem- 
berment of man; it seeks to roll up all his strength 
and sweetness, all his passion and wisdom, into one, 
and make of him a perfect man exulting in perfec- 
tion. To conclude ascetically is to give up, and not 
to solve, the problem. The ascetic and the creeping 
hog, although they are at different poles, have equally 
failed in life. The one has sacrificed his crew; the 
other brings back his seamen in a cock-boat, and has 
lost the ship. I believe there are not many sea- 
captains who would plume themselves on either re- 
sult as a success. 

But if it is righteousness thus to fuse together our 
divisive impulses and march with one mind through 



LAY MORALS 35 

life, there is plainly one thing more unrighteous than 
all others, and one declension which is irretrievable 
and draws on the rest. And this is to lose conscious- 
ness of oneself. In the best of times, it is but by 
flashes, when our whole nature is clear, strong, and 
conscious, and events conspire to leave us free, that 
we enjoy communion with our soul. At the worst, 
we are so fallen and passive that we may say shortly 
we have none. An arctic torpor seizes upon men. 
Although built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimu- 
lating world, they develop a tendency to go bodily to 
sleep; consciousness becomes engrossed among the 
reflex and mechanical parts of life, and soon loses 
both the will and power to look higher considerations 
in the face. This is ruin; this is the last failure in 
life; this is temporal damnation, damnation on the 
spot and without the form of judgment. " What shall 
it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
himself?'' 

It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his 
own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that 
the better part of moral and "religious education is 
directed; not only that of words and doctors, but the 
sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all 
God's scholars till we die. If, as teachers, we are 
to say anything to the purpose, we must say what 
will remind the pupil of his soul; we must speak that 
soul's dialect; we must talk of life and conduct as 
his soul would have him think of them. If, from 
some conformity between us and the pupil, or per- 
haps among all men, we do in truth speak in such a 
dialect and express such views, beyond question we 



36 LAY MORALS 

shall touch in him a spring; beyond question he 
will recognise the dialect as one that he himself 
has spoken in his better hours; beyond question he 
will cry, ''I had forgotten, but now I remember; I 
too have eyes, and I had forgot to use them! I too 
have a soul of my own, arrogantly upright, and to 
that I will listen and conform." In short, say to 
him anything that he has once thought, or been upon 
the point of thinking, or show him any view of life 
that he has once clearly seen, or been upon the point 
of clearly seeing; and you have done your part and 
may leave him to complete the education for himself. 
Now the view taught at the present time seems to 
me to want greatness; and the dialect in which alone 
it can be intelligibly uttered is not the dialect of my 
soul. It is a sort of postponement of life; nothing 
quite is, but something different is to be; we are to 
keep our eyes upon the indirect from the cradle to 
the grave. We are to regulate our conduct not by 
desire, but by a politic eye upon the future; and to 
value acts as they will bring us money or good opin- 
ion; as they will bring us, in one word, profit. We 
must be what is called respectable, and offend no 
one by our carriage; it will not do to make oneself 
conspicuous — who knows? even in virtue? says the 
Christian parent! And we must be what is called 
prudent and make money; not only because it is 
pleasant to have money, but because that also is a 
part of respectability, and we cannot hope to be 
received in society without decent possessions. Re- 
ceived in society! as if that were the kingdom of 
heaven! There is dear Mr. So-and-so; — look at 



LAY MORALS 37 

him! — so much respected — so much looked up 
to — quite the Christian merchant! And we must 
cut our conduct as strictly as possible after the pat- 
tern of Mr. So-and-so; and lay our whole lives to 
make money and be strictly decent. Besides these 
holy injunctions, which form by far the greater part 
of a youth's training in our Christian homes, there 
are at least two other doctrines. We are to live 
just now as well as we can, but scrape at last into 
heaven, where we shall be good. We are to worry 
through the week in a lay, disreputable way, but, 
to make matters square, live a different life on Sun- 
day. 

The train of thought we have been following gives 
us a key to all these positions, without stepping aside 
to justify them, on their own ground. It is because 
we have been disgusted fifty times with physical 
squalls, and fifty times torn between conflicting im- 
pulses, that we teach people this indirect and tactical 
procedure in life, and to judge by remote conse- 
quences instead of the immediate face of things. 
The very desi're to act as our own souls would have 
us, coupled with a pathetic disbelief in ourselves, 
moves us to follow the example of others; perhaps, 
who knows? they may be on the right track; and 
the more our patterns are in number, the better seems 
the chance; until, if we be acting in concert with 
a whole civilised nation, there are surely a majority 
of chances that we must be acting right. And 
again, how true it is that we can never behave as we 
wish in this tormented sphere, and can only aspire 
to different and more favourable circumstances, in 



38 LAY MORALS 

order to stand out and be ourselves wholly and 
rightly! And yet once more, if in the hurry and 
pressure of affairs and passions you tend to nod and 
become drowsy, here are twenty-four hours of Sun- 
day set apart for you to hold counsel with your soul 
and look around you on the possibilities of life. 

This is not, of course, all that is to be, or even 
should be, said for these doctrines. Only, in the 
course of this chapter, the reader and I have agreed 
upon a few catchwords, and been looking at morals 
on a certain system; it was a pity to lose an oppor- 
tunity of testing the catchwords, and seeing whether 
by this system as well as by others, current doctrines 
could show any probable justification. If the doc- 
trines had come too badly out of the trial, it would 
have condemned the system. Our sight of the world 
is very narrow; the mind but a pedestrian instru- 
ment; there's nothing new under the sun, as Solo- 
mon says, except the man himself; and though that 
changes the aspect of everything else, yet he must 
see the same things as other people, only from a dif- 
ferent side. 

And now, having admitted so much, let us turn to 
criticism. 

If you teach a man to keep his eyes upon what 
others think of him, unthinkingly to lead the life and 
hold the principles of the majority of his contem- 
poraries, you must discredit in his eyes the one 
authoritative voice of his own soul. He may be a 
docile citizen; he will never be a man. It is ours, 
on the other hand, to disregard this babble and 
chattering of other men better and worse than we 



LAY MORALS 39 

are, and to walk straight before us by what light we 
have. They may be right; but so, before heaven, 
are we. They may know; but we know also, and by 
that knowledge we must stand or fall. There is 
such a thing as loyalty to a man's own better self; 
and from those who have not that, God help me, 
how am I to look for loyalty to others? The most 
dull, the most imbecile, at a certain moment turn 
round, at a certain point will hear no further argu- 
ment, but stand unflinching by their own dumb, 
irrational sense of right. It is not only by steel or 
fire, but through contempt and blame, that the mar- 
tyr fulfils the calling of his dear soul. Be glad if 
you are not tried by such extremities. But although 
all the world ranged themselves in one line to tell you 
"This is wrong," be you your own faithful vassal 
and the ambassador of God — throw down the glove 
and answer, "This is right." Do you think you 
are only declaring yourself? Perhaps in some dim 
way, like a child who delivers a message not fully 
understood, you are opening wider the straits of prej- 
udice and preparing mankind for some truer and 
more spiritual grasp of truth; perhaps, as you stand 
forth for your own judgment, you are covering a 
thousand weak ones with your body; perhaps, by 
this declaration alone, you have avoided the guilt 
of false witness against humanity and the little 
ones unborn. It is good, I believe, to be respecta- 
ble, but much nobler to respect oneself and utter the 
voice of God. God, if there be any God, speaks 
daily in a new language by the tongues of men; the 
thoughts and habits of each fresh generation and 



40 LAY MORALS 

each new-coined spirit throw another light upon the 
universe and contain another commentary on the 
printed Bibles; every scruple, every true dissent, 
every glimpse of something new, is a letter of God's 
alphabet; and though there is a grave responsibility 
for all who speak, is there none for those who un- 
righteously keep silence and conform? Is not that 
also to conceal and cloak God's counsel ? And how 
should we regard the man of science who suppressed 
all facts that would not tally with the orthodoxy of 
the hour? 

Wrong ? You are as surely wrong as the sun rose 
this morning round the revolving shoulder of the 
world. Not truth, but truthfulness, is the good of 
your endeavour. For when will men receive that 
first part and prerequisite of truth, that, by the order 
of things, by the greatness of the universe, by the 
darkness and partiality of man's experience, by the 
inviolate secrecy of God, kept close in His most open 
revelations, every man is, and to the end of the ages 
must be, wrong? Wrong to the universe; wrong to 
mankind, wrong to God. And yet in another sense, 
and that plainer and nearer, every man of men, who 
wishes truly, must be right. He is right to himself, 
and in the measure of his sagacity and candour. 
That let him do in all sincerity and zeal, not sparing a 
thought for contrary opinions; that, for what it is 
worth, let him proclaim. Be not afraid; although he 
be wrong, so also is the dead, stuffed Dagon he insults. 
For the voice of God, whatever it is, is not that 
stammering, inept tradition which the people holds. 
These truths survive in travesty, swamped in a world 



LAY MORALS 41 

of spiritual darkness and confusion; and what 
a few comprehend and faithfully hold, the many, 
in their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, and mis- 
interpret. 

So far of Respectability: what the Covenanters 
used to call "rank conformity": the deadliest gag 
and wet blanket that can be laid on men. And now 
of Profit. And this doctrine is perhaps the more 
redoubtable, because it harms all sorts of men; not 
only the heroic and self-reliant, but the obedient, cow- 
like squadrons. A man, by this doctrine, looks to 
consequences at the second, or third, or fiftieth turn. 
He chooses his end, and for that, with wily turns and 
through a great sea of tedium, steers this mortal 
bark. There may be political wisdom in such a 
view; but I am persuaded there can spring no great 
moral zeal. To look thus obliquely upon life is the 
very recipe for moral slumber. Our intention and 
endeavour should be directed, not on some vague 
end of money or applause, which shall come to us 
by a ricochet in a month or a year, or twenty years, 
but on the act itself; not on the approval of others, 
but on the rightness of that act. At every instant, 
at every step in life, the point has to be decided, our 
soul has to be saved, heaven has to be gained or 
lost. At every step our spirits must applaud, at every 
step we must set down the foot and sound the trum- 
pet. "This have I done," we must say; "right or 
wrong, this have I done, in unfeigned honour of in- 
tention, as to myself and God." The profit of every 
act should be this, that it was right for us to do it. 
Any other profit than that, if it involved a kingdom 



42 LAY MORALS 

or the woman I love, ought, if I were God's upright 
soldier, to leave me untempted. 

It is the mark of what we call a righteous decision, 
that it is made directly and for its own sake. The 
whole man, mind and body, having come to an agree- 
ment, tyrannically dictates conduct. There are two 
dispositions eternally opposed: that in which we 
recognise that one thing is wrong and another right, 
and that in which, not seeing any clear distinction, 
we fall back on the consideration of consequences. 
The truth is, by the scope of our present teaching, 
nothing is thought very wrong and nothing very 
right, except a few actions which have the disad- 
vantage of being disrespectable when found out; 
the more serious part of men inclining to think all 
things rather wrong, the more jovial to suppose them 
right enough for practical purposes. I will engage 
my head, they do not find that view in their own 
hearts; they have taken it up in a dark despair; 
they are but troubled sleepers talking in their sleep. 
The soul, or my soul at least, thinks very distinctly 
upon many points of right and wrong, and often 
differs flatly with what is held out as the thought of 
corporate humanity in the code of society or the code 
of law. Am I to suppose myself a monster? I 
have only to read books, the Christian Gospels for 
example, to think myself a monster no longer; and 
instead I think the mass of people are merely speak- 
ing in their sleep. 

It is a commonplace, enshrined, if I mistake not, 
even in school copy-books, that honour is to be 
sought and not fame. I ask no other admission; we 



LAY MORALS 43 

are to seek honour, upright walking with our own 
conscience every hour of the day, and not fame, 
the consequence, the far-off reverberation of our 
foot-steps. The walk, not the rumour of the walk, 
is what concerns righteousness. Better disrespecta- 
ble honour than dishonourable fame. Better useless 
or seemingly hurtful honour, than dishonour ruling 
empires and filling the mouths of thousands. For 
the man must walk by what he sees, and leave the 
issue with God who made him and taught him by 
the fortune of his life. You would not dishonour 
yourself for money; which is at least tangible; would 
you do it, then, for a doubtful forecast in politics, 
or another person's theory in morals? 

So intricate is the scheme of our affairs, that no 
man can calculate the bearing of his own behaviour 
even on those immediately around him, how much 
less upon the world at large or on succeeding genera- 
tions! To walk by external prudence and the rule 
of consequences would require, not a man, but God. 
All that we know to guide us in this changing laby- 
rinth is our soul with its fixed design of righteousness, 
and a few old precepts which commend themselves 
to that. The precepts are vague when we endeavour 
to apply them; consequences are more entangled 
than a wisp of string, and their confusion is unrest- 
ingly in change; we must hold to what we know and 
walk by it. We must walk by faith, indeed, and not 
by knowledge. 

You do not love another because he is wealthy or 
wise or eminently respectable: you love him because 
you love him; that is love, and any other only a de- 



44 LAY MORALS 

rision and grimace. It should be the same with all 
our actions. If we were to conceive a perfect man, 
it should be one who was never torn between con- 
flicting impulses, but who, on the absolute consent 
of all his parts and faculties, submitted in every 
action of his life to a self-dictation as absolute and 
unreasoned as that which bids him love one woman 
and be true to her till death. But we should not 
conceive him as sagacious, ascetical, playing off his 
appetites against each other, turning the wing of 
public respectable immorality instead of riding it 
directly down, or advancing towards his end through 
a thousand sinister compromises and considerations. 
The one man might be wily, might be adroit, might 
be wise, might be respectable, might be gloriously 
useful; it is the other man who would be good. 

The soul asks honour and not fame; to be upright, 
not to be successful; to be good, not prosperous; to 
be essentially, not outwardly, respectable. Does 
your soul ask profit? Does it ask money ? Does it 
ask the approval of the indifferent herd? I believe 
not. For my own part, I want but little money, I 
hope; and I do not want to be decent at all, but to 
be good. 



CHAPTER IV 

We have spoken of that supreme self-dictation 
which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates 
with the variation of events and circumstances. 
Now, for us, that is ultimate. It may be founded 
on some reasonable process, but it is not a process 
which we can follow or comprehend. And moreover 
the dictation is not continuous, or not continuous 
except in very lively and well-living natures; and 
betweenwhiles we must brush along without it. 
Practice is a more intricate and desperate business 
than the toughest theorising; life is an affair of cav- 
alry, where rapid judgment and prompt action are 
alone possible and right. As a matter of fact, there 
is no one so upright but he is influenced by the 
world's chatter; and no one so headlong but he re- 
quires to consider consequences and to keep an eye 
on profit. For the soul adopts all affections and 
appetites without exception, and cares only to com- 
bine them for some common purpose which shall in- 
terest all. Now respect for the opinion of others, 
the study of consequences and the desire of power 
and comfort, are all undeniably factors in the nature 
of man; and the more undeniably since we find that, 
in our current doctrines, they have swallowed up the 
others and are thought to conclude in themselves 
all the worthy parts of man. These, then, must also 
be suffered to affect conduct in the practical domain. 



46 LAY MORALS 

much or little according as they are forcibly or feebly 
present to the mind of each. 

Now a man's view of the universe is mostly a view 
of the civilised society in which he lives. Other men 
and women are so much more grossly and so much 
more intimately palpable to his perceptions, that they 
stand between him and all the rest; they are larger 
to his eye than the sun, he hears them more plainly 
than thunder; with them, by them, and for them, he 
must live and die. And hence the laws that affect 
his intercourse with his fellow-men, although merely 
customary and the creatures of a generation, are 
more clearly and continually before his mind than 
those which bind him into the eternal system of 
things, support him in his upright progress on this 
whirling ball, or keep up the fire of his bodily life. 
And hence it is that money stands in the first rank 
of considerations and so powerfully affects the choice. 
For our society is built with money for mortar; money 
is present in every joint of circumstance; it might be 
named the social atmosphere, since, in society, it is 
by that alone that men continue to live, and only 
through that or chance that they can reach or affect 
one another. Money gives us food, shelter, and 
privacy; it permits us to be clean in person, opens 
for us the doors of the theatre, gains us books for 
study or pleasure, enables us to help the distresses of 
others, and puts us above necessity so that we can 
choose the best in life. If we love, it enables us to 
meet and live with the loved one, or even to prolong 
her health and life; if we have scruples, it gives us 
an opportunity to be honest; if we have any bright 



LAY MORALS 47 

designs, here is what will smooth the way to their 
accomplishment. Penury is the worst slavery, and 
will soon lead to death. 

But money is only a means; it presupposes a man 
to use it. The rich can go where he pleases, but 
perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a 
library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has 
neither patience to read nor intelligence to see. The 
table may be loaded, and the appetite wanting; the 
purse may be full, and the heart empty. He may 
have gained the world and lost himself; and with 
all his wealth around him, in a great house and 
spacious and beautiful demesne, he may live as 
blank a life as any tattered ditcher. Without an 
appetite, without an aspiration, void of appreciation, 
bankrupt of desire and hope, there, in his great 
house, let him sit and look upon his fingers. It is 
perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste 
for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire. 
Although neither is to be despised, it is always bet- 
ter policy to learn an interest than to make a thous- 
and pounds; for the money will soon be spent, or 
perhaps you may feel no joy in spending it; but the 
interest remains imperishable and ever new. To be- 
come a botanist, a geologist, a social philosopher, 
an antiquary, or an artist, is to enlarge one's posses- 
sions in the universe by an incalculably higher de- 
gree, and by a far surer sort of property, than to 
purchase a farm of many acres. You had perhaps 
two thousand a year before the transaction; perhaps 
you have two thousand five hundred after it. That 
represents your gain in the one case. But in the 



48 LAY MORALS 

other, you have thrown down a barrier which con- 
cealed significance and beauty. The bhnd man has 
learned to see. The prisoner has opened up a win- 
dow in his cell and beholds enchanting prospects; 
he will never again be a prisoner as he was; he can 
watch clouds and changing seasons, ships on the 
river, travellers on the road, and the stars at night; 
happy prisoner! his eyes have broken jail! And 
again he who has learned to love an art or sci- 
ence has wisely laid up riches against the day of 
riches; if prosperity come, he will not enter poor into 
his inheritance; he will not slumber and forget him- 
self in the lap of money, or spend his hours in count- 
ing idle treasures, but be up and briskly doing; he 
will have the true alchemic touch, which is not that 
of Midas, but which transmutes dead money into 
living delight and satisfaction. [ Etre et pas avoir — 
to be, not to possess — that is the problem of life. To 
be wealthy, a rich nature is the first requisite and 
money but the second. To be of a quick and healthy 
blood, to share in all honourable curiosities, to be 
rich in admiration and free from envy, to rejoice 
greatly in the good of others, to love with such gen- 
erosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession 
in absence or unkindness — these are the gifts of for- 
tune which money cannot buy and without which 
money can buy nothing. For what can a man pos- 
sess, or what can he enjoy, except himself? If he 
enlarge his nature, it is then that he enlarges his es- 
tates. If his nature be happy and valiant, he will en- 
joy the universe as if it were his park and orchard. 
But money is not only to be spent; it has also to 



LAY MORALS 49 

be earned. It is not merely a convenience or a nec- 
essary in social life; but it is the coin in which man- 
kind pays his wages to the individual man. And 
from this side, the question of money has a very dif- 
ferent scope and application. For no man can be 
honest who does not work. Service for service. 
If the farmer buys corn, and the labourer ploughs 
and reaps, and the baker sweats in his hot bakery, 
plainly you who eat must do something in your turn. 
It is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God 
upon your knees for the admirable constitution of 
society and your own convenient situation in its 
upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it 
enough to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then 
you are only changing the point of the inquiry; and 
you must first have bought the sixpence. Service 
for service: how have you bought your sixpences? 
A man of spirit desires certainty in a thing of such 
a nature; he must see to it that there is some reci- 
procity between him and mankind; that he pays his 
expenditure in service; that he has not a lion's share 
in profit and a drone's in labour; and is not a sleep- 
ing partner and mere costly incubus on the great 
mercantile concern of mankind. 

Services differ so widely with different gifts, and 
some are so inappreciable to external tests, that this 
is not only a matter for the private conscience, but 
one which even there must be leniently and trustfully 
considered. For remember how many serve man- 
kind who do no more than meditate; and how many 
are precious to their friends for no more than a 
sweet and joyous temper. To perform the function 



50 



LAY MORALS 



of a man of letters it is not necessary to write; nay, 
it is perhaps better to be a living book. So long 
as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by 
others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; 
and no man is useless while he has a friend. The 
true services of life are inestimable in money, and 
are never paid. Kind words and caresses, high 
and wise thoughts, humane designs, tender be- 
haviour to the weak and suffering, and all the chari- 
ties of man's existence, are neither bought nor sold. 
Yet the dearest and readiest, if not the most just, 
criterion of a man's services, is the wage that man- 
kind pays him or, briefly, what he earns. There at 
least there can be no ambiguity. St. Paul is fully 
and freely entitled to his earnings as a tent-maker, 
and Socrates fully and freely entitled to his earnings 
as a sculptor, although the true business of each was 
not only something different, but something which 
remained unpaid. A man cannot forget that he is 
not superintended, and serves mankind on parole. 
He would like, when challenged by his own con- 
science, to reply: 'T have done so much work, and 
no less, with my own hands and brain, and taken 
so much profit, and no more, for my own personal 
delight." And though St. Paul, if he had possessed 
a private fortune, would probably have scorned to 
waste his time in making tents, yet of all sacrifices to 
public opinion none can be more easily pardoned 
than that by which a man, already spiritually useful 
to the world, should restrict the field of his chief use- 
fulness to perform services more apparent, and pos- 
sess a livelihood that neither stupidity nor malice 



LAY MORALS 51 

could call in question. Like all sacrifices to public 
opinion and mere external decency, this would cer- 
tainly be wrong; for the soul should rest contented 
with its own approval and indissuadably pursue its 
own calling. Yet, so grave and delicate is the ques- 
tion, that a man may well hesitate before he decides 
it for himself; he may well fear that he sets too high 
a valuation on his own endeavours after good; he 
may well condescend upon a humbler duty, where 
others than himself shall judge the service and pro- 
portion the wage. 

And yet it is to this very responsibility that the 
rich are born. They can shufHe off the duty on no 
other; they are their own paymasters on parole; 
and must pay themselves fair wages and no more. 
For I suppose that in the course of ages, and through 
reform and civil war and invasion, mankind was 
pursuing some other and more general design than 
to set one or two Englishmen of the nineteenth cen- 
tury beyond the reach of needs and duties. Society 
was scarce put together, and defended with so much 
eloquence and blood, for the convenience of two or 
three millionaires and a few hundred other persons 
of wealth and position. It is plain that if mankind 
thus acted and suffered during all these generations, 
they hoped some benefit, some ease, some well-being, 
for themselves and their descendants; that if they 
supported law and order, it was to secure fair-play 
for all; that if they denied themselves in the present 
they must have had some designs upon the future. 
Now a great hereditary fortune is a miracle of man's 
wisdom and mankind's forbearance; it has not only 



52 



LAY MORALS 



been amassed and handed down, it has been suffered 
to be amassed and handed down; and surely in such 
a consideration as this, its possessor should find 
only a new spur to activity and honour, that with all 
this power of service he should not prove unservice- 
able, and this mass of treasure should return in bene- 
fits upon the race. If he had twenty, or thirty, or a 
hundred thousand at his banker's, or if all Yorkshire 
or all California were his to manage or to sell, he 
would still be morally penniless, and have the world 
to begin like Whittington, until he had found 
some way of serving mankind. His wage is physi- 
cally in his own hand; but, in honour, that wage 
must still be earned. He is only steward on parole 
of what is called his fortune. He must honourably 
perform his stewardship. He must estimate his 
own services and allow himself a salary in proportion, 
for that will be one among his functions. And while 
he will then be free to spend that salary, great or 
little, on his own private pleasures, the rest of his 
fortune he but holds and disposes under trust for 
mankind; it is not his, because he has not earned it; 
it cannot be his, because his services have already 
been paid; but year by year it is his to distribute, 
whether to help individuals whose birthright and 
outfit have been swallowed up in his, or to further 
public works and institutions. 

At this rate, short of inspiration, it seems hardly 
possible to be both rich and honest; and the million- 
aire is under a far more continuous temptation to 
thieve than the labourer who gets his shilling daily for 
despicable toils. Are you surprised ? It is even so. 



LAY MORALS 53 

And you repeat it every Sunday in your churches. 
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a 
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
God." I have heard this and similar texts inge- 
niously explained away and brushed from the path 
of the aspiring Christian by the tender Great-heart 
of the parish. One excellent clergyman told us that 
the "eye of a needle" meant a low, Oriental postern 
through which camels could not pass till they were 
unloaded — which is very likely just; and then went 
on, bravely confounding the "kingdom of God" 
with heaven, the future paradise, to show that of 
course no rich person could expect to carry his riches 
beyond the grave — which, of course, he could not 
and never did. Various greedy sinners of the con- 
gregation drank in the comfortable doctrine with 
relief. It was worth the while having come to church 
that Sunday morning! All was plain. The Bible, as 
usual, meant nothing in particular; it was merely an 
obscure and figurative school copy-book; and if a 
man were only respectable, he was a man after God's 
own heart. 

Alas! I fear not. And though this matter of a 
man's services is one for his own conscience, there 
are some cases in which it is difficult to restrain the 
mind from judging. Thus I shall be very easily 
persuaded that a man has earned his daily bread; 
and if he has but a friend or two to whom his com- 
pany is delightful at heart, I am more than persuaded 
at once. But it will be very hard to persuade me 
that any one has earned an income of a hundred 
thousand. What he is to his friends, he still would 



54 LAY MORALS 

be if he were made penniless to-morrow; for as to 
the courtiers of luxury and power, I will neither con- 
sider them friends, nor indeed consider them at all. 
What he does for mankind there are most likely 
hundreds who would do the same, as effectually for 
the race and as pleasurably . to themselves, for the 
merest fraction of this monstrous wage. Why it is 
paid, I am, therefore, unable to conceive, and as the 
man pays it himself, out of funds in his detention, I 
have a certain backwardness to think him honest. 

At least, we have gained a very obvious point; 
that what a man spends upon himself, he shall have 
earned by services to the race. Thence flows a princi- 
ple for the outset of life, which is a little different 
from that taught in the present day. I am address- 
ing the middle and the upper classes; those who 
have already been fostered and prepared for life at 
some expense; those who have some choice before 
them, and can pick professions; and above all, those 
who are what is called independent, and need do 
nothing unless pushed by honour or ambition. In 
this particular the poor are happy; among them, 
when a lad comes to his strength, he must take the 
work that offers, and can take it with an easy con- 
science. But in the richer classes the question is 
complicated by the number of opportunities and a 
variety of considerations. Here, then, this principle 
of ours comes in helpfully. The young man has to 
seek, not a road to wealth, but an opportunity of ser- 
vice; not money, but honest work. If he has some 
strong propensity, some calling of nature, some over- 
weening interest in any special field of industry, in- 



LAY MORALS 55 

quiry, or art, he will do right to obey the impulse; 
and that for two reasons: the first external, because 
there he will render the best services; the second 
personal, because a demand of his own nature is to 
him without appeal whenever it can be satisfied with 
the consent of his other faculties and appetites. Ji he 
he has no such elective taste, by the very principle 
on which he chooses any pursuit at all he must choose 
the most honest and serviceable, and not the most 
highly remunerate. We have here an external 
problem, not from or to ourself, but flowing from the 
constitution of society; and we have our own soul 
with its fixed design of righteousness. All that can 
be done is to present the problem in proper terms, 
and leave it to the soul of the individual. Now the 
problem to the poor is one of necessity; to earn 
wherewithal to live, they must find remunerative 
labour. But the problem to the rich is one of 
honour: having the wherewithal they must find 
serviceable labour. Each has to earn his daily 
bread: the one, because he has not yet got it to 
eat; the other who has already eaten it, because he 
has not yet earned it. 

Of course, what is true of bread is true of luxuries 
and comforts, whether for the body or the mind. 
But the consideration of luxuries leads us to a new 
aspect of the whole question, and to a second propo- 
sition no less true, and maybe no less startling, than 
the last. 

At the present day, we, of the easier classes, are in 
a state of surfeit and disgrace after meat. Plethora 
has filled us with indifference; and we are covered 



56 LAY MORALS 

from head to foot with the callosities of habitual 
opulence. Born into what is called a certain rank, 
we live, as the saying is, up to our station. We 
squander without enjoyment, because our fathers 
squandered. We eat of the best, not from delicacy, 
but from brazen habit. We do not keenly enjoy or 
eagerly desire the presence of a luxury; we are un- 
accustomed to its absence. And not only do we 
squander money from habit, but still more pitifully 
waste it in ostentation. I can think of no more 
melancholy disgrace for a creature who professes 
either reason or pleasure for his guide, than to spend 
the smallest fraction of his income upon that which 
he does not desire; and to keep a carriage in which 
you do not wish to drive, or a butler of whom you 
are afraid, is a pathetic kind of folly. Money, being 
a means of happiness, should make both parties 
happy when it changes hands; rightly disposed, it 
should be twice blessed in its employment; and buy- 
er and seller should alike have their twenty shillings' 
worth of profit out of every pound. Benjamin 
Franklin went through life an altered man, because 
he once paid too dearly for a penny whistle. My 
concern springs usually from a deeper source, to wit, 
from having bought a whistle when I did not want 
one. I find I regret this, or would regret it if I gave 
myself the time, not only on personal but on moral 
and philanthropical considerations. For, first, in a 
world where money is wanting to buy books for eager 
students and food and medicine for pining children, 
and where a large majority are starved in their most 
immediate desires, it is surely base, stupid, and cruel 



LAY MORALS 57 

to squander money when I am pushed by no appe- 
tite and enjoy no return of genuine satisfaction. My 
philanthropy is wide enough in scope to include my- 
self, and when I have made myself happy, I have at 
least one good argument that I have acted rightly; 
but where that is not so, and I have bought and not 
enjoyed, my mouth is closed, and I conceive that I 
have robbed the poor. And, second, anything I 
buy or use which I do not sincerely want or cannot 
vividly enjoy, disturbs the balance of supply and de- 
mand, and contributes to remove industrious hands 
from the production of what is useful or pleasurable 
and to keep them busy upon ropes of sand and things 
that are a weariness to the flesh. That extrava- 
gance is truly sinful, and a very silly sin to boot, in 
which we impoverish mankind and ourselves. It 
is another question for each man's heart. He knows 
if he can enjoy what he buys and uses; if he cannot, 
he is a dog in the manger; nay, if he cannot, I con- 
tend he is a thief, for nothing really belongs to a man 
which he cannot use. Proprietor is connected with 
propriety; and that only is the man's which is proper 
to his wants and faculties. 

A youth, in choosing a career, must not be alarmed 
by poverty. Want is a sore thing, but poverty does 
not imply want. It remains to be seen whether 
with half his present income, or a third, he cannot, 
in the most generous sense, live as fully as at present. 
He is a fool who objects to luxuries; but he is also a 
fool who does not protest against the waste of lux- 
uries on those who do not desire and cannot enjoy 
them. It remains to be seen, by each man who 



58 LAY MORALS 

would live a true life to himself and not a merely 
specious life to society, how many luxuries he truly 
wants and to how many he merely submits as to a 
social propriety; and all these last he will immediate- 
ly forswear. Let him do this, and he will be sur- 
prised to find how little money it requires to keep in 
complete contentment and activity of mind and 
senses. Life at any level among the easy classes is 
conceived upon a principle of rivalry, where each 
man and each household must ape the tastes and 
emulate the display of others. One is delicate in 
eating, another in wine, a third in furniture or works 
of art or dress; and I, who care nothing for any of 
these refinements, who am perhaps a plain athletic 
creature and love exercise, beef, beer, flannel shirts 
and a camp bed, am yet called upon to assimilate all 
these other tastes and make these foreign occasions 
of expenditure my own. It may be cynical: I am 
sure I shall be told it is selfish; but I will spend my 
money as I please and for my own intimate per- 
sonal gratification, and should count myself a nin- 
compoop indeed to lay out the colour of a halfpenny 
on any fancied social decency or duty. I shall not 
wear gloves unless my, hands are cold, or unless I 
am born with a delight in them. Dress is my own 
affair, and that of one other in the world; that, in 
fact and for an obvious reason, of any woman who 
shall chance to be in love with me. I shall lodge 
where I have a mind. If I do not ask society to live 
with me, they must be silent; and even if I do, they 
have no further right but to refuse the invitation. 
There is a kind of idea abroad that a man must 



LAY MORALS 59 

live up to his station, that his house, his table, and 
his toilette shall be in a ratio of equivalence, and 
equally imposing to the world. If this is in the 
Bible, the passage has eluded my inquiries. If it is 
not in the Bible, it is nowhere but in the heart of the 
fool. Throw aside this fancy. See what you want, 
and spend upon that; distinguish what you do not 
care about, and spend nothing upon that. There 
are not many people who can differentiate wines 
above a certain and that not at all a high price. 
Are you sure you are one of these? Are you sure 
you prefer cigars at sixpence each to pipes at some 
fraction of a farthing? Are you sure you wish to 
keep a gig? Do you care about where you sleep, 
or are you not as much at your ease in a cheap 
lodging as in an Elizabethan manor-house? Do 
you enjoy fine clothes ? It is not possible to answer 
these questions without a trial; and there is nothing 
more obvious to my mind than that a man who has 
not experienced some ups and downs, and been 
forced to live more cheaply than in his father's house, 
has still his education to begin. Let the experi- 
ment be made, and he will find to his surprise that he 
has been eating beyond his appetite up to that hour; 
that the cheap lodging, the cheap tobacco, the rough 
country clothes, the plain table, have not only no 
power to damp his spirits, but perhaps give him as 
keen pleasure in the using as the dainties that he 
took, betwixt sleep and waking, in his former callous 
and somnambulous submission to wealth. 

The true Bohemian, a creature lost to view under 
the imaginary Bohemians of literature, is exactly 



6o LAY MORALS 

described by such a principle of life. The Bohe- 
mian of the novel, who drinks more than is good for 
him and prefers anything to work, and wears strange 
clothes, is for the most part a respectable Bohemian, 
respectable in disrespectability, living for the outside, 
and an adventurer.. But the man I mean lives 
wholly to himself, does what he wishes and not what 
is thought proper, buys what he wants for himself 
and' not what is thought proper, works at what he 
believes he can do well and not what will bring him 
in money or favour. You may be the most respect- 
able of men, and yet a true Bohemian. And the 
test is this: a Bohemian, for as poor as he may be, 
is always open-handed to his friends; he knows 
what he -can do with money and how he can do with- 
out it, a far rarer and more useful knowledge; he 
has had less, and continued to live in some content- 
ment; and hence he cares not to keep more, and 
shares his sovereign or his shilling with a friend. 
The poor, if they are generous, are Bohemian in 
virtue of their birth. Do you know where beggars 
go ? Not to the great houses where people sit dazed 
among their thousands, but to the doors of poor men 
who have seen the world; and it was the widow who 
had only two mites, who cast half her fortune into 
the treasury. 

But a young man who elects to save on dress or 
on lodging, or who in any way falls out of the level 
of expenditure which is common to his level in 
society, falls out of society altogether. I suppose the 
young man to have chosen his career on honour- 
able principles; he finds his talents and instincts can 



LAY MORALS 6i 

be best contented in a certain pursuit; in a cer- 
tain industry, he is sure that he is serving man- 
kind with a healthy and becoming service; and he 
is not sure that he v^ould be doing so, or doing so 
equally well, in any other industry within his, reach. 
Then that is his true sphere in life; not the one in 
which he was born to his father, but the one which 
is proper to his talents and instincts. And suppose 
he does fall out of society, is that a cause of sorrow ? 
Is your heart so dead that you prefer the recognition 
of many to the love of a few ? Do you think society 
loves you? Put it to the proof. Decline in ma- 
terial expenditure, and you will find they care no 
more for you than for the Khan of Tartary. You 
will lose no friends. If you had any, you will keep 
them. Only those who were friends to your coat 
and equipage will disappear; the smiling faces will 
disappear as by enchantment; but the kind hearts 
will remain steadfastly kind. Are you so lost, are 
you so dead, are you so little sure of your own soul 
and your own footing upon solid fact, that you pre- 
fer before goodness, and happiness the countenance 
of sundry diners-out, who will flee from you at a 
report of ruin, who will drop you with insult at a 
shadow of disgrace, who do not know you and do 
not care to know you but by sight, and whom you in 
your turn neither know nor care to know in a more 
human manner? Is it not the principle of society, 
openly avowed, that friendship must not interfere 
with business; which being paraphrased, means sim- 
ply that a consideration of money goes before any 
consideration of affection known to this cold-blooded 



62 LAY MORALS 

gang, that they have not even the honour of thieves, 
and will rook their nearest and dearest as readily as 
a stranger? I hope I would go as far as most to 
serve a friend; but I declare openly I would not 
put on my hat to do a pleasure to society. I may 
starve my appetites and control my temper for the 
sake of those I love; but society shall take me as I 
choose to be, or go without me. Neither they nor I 
will lose; for where there is no love, it is both la- 
borious and unprofitable to associate. 

But it is obvious that if it is only right for a man to 
spend money on that which he can truly and thor- 
oughly enjoy, the doctrine applies with equal force 
to the rich and to the poor, to the man who has 
amassed many thousands as well as to the youth 
precariously beginning life. And it may be asked, 
Is not this merely preparing misers, who are not the 
best of company? But the principle was this: that 
which a man has not fairly earned, and, further, 
that which he cannot fully enjoy, does not belong 
to him, but is a part of mankind's treasure which he 
holds as steward on parole. To mankind, then, it 
must be made profitable; and how this should be 
done is, once more, a problem which each man must 
solve for himself, and about which none has a right 
to judge him. Yet there are a few considerations 
which are very obvious and may here be stated. 
Mankind is not only the whole in general, but every 
one in particular. Every man or woman is one of 
mankind's dear possessions; to his or her just brain, 
and kind heart, and active hands, mankind entrusts 
some of its hopes for the future; he or she is a possi- 



LAY MORALS 63 

ble well-spring of good acts and source of blessings 
to the race. This money which you do not need, 
which, in a rigid sense, you do not want, may there- 
fore be returned not only in public benefactions to 
the race, but in private kindnesses. Your wife, your 
children, your friends stand nearest to you, and 
should be helped the first. There at least there can 
be little imposture, for you know their necessities 
of your own knowledge. And consider, if all the 
world did as you did, and according to their means 
extended help in the circle of their affections, there 
would be no crying want in times of plenty and no 
more cold, mechanical charity given with a doubt 
and received with confusion. Would not this sim- 
ple rule make a new world out of the old and cruel 
one which we inhabit? 

[After two more sentences the fragment breaks off.] 



FATHER DAMIEN 



FATHER DAMIEN 

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE REVEREND 
DR. HYDE OF HONOLULU 

Sydney, February 25, 1890. 
Sir, — It may probably occur to you that we have 
met, and visited, and conversed; on my side, with 
interest. You may remember that you have done 
me several courtesies, for which I was prepared to 
be grateful. But there are duties which come be- 
fore gratitude, and offences which justly divide 
friends, far more acquaintances. Your letter to the 
Reverend H. B. Gage is a document, which, in my 
sight, if you had filled me with bread when I was 
starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when 
he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds 
of gratitude. You know enough, doubtless, of the 
process of canonisation to be aware that, a hundred 
years after .the death of Damien, there will appear a 
a man charged with the painful office of the deviVs 
advocate. After that noble brother of mine, and 
of all frail clay, shall have lain a century at rest, one 
shall accuse, one defend him. The circumstance is 
unusual that the devil's advocate should be a volun- 
teer, should be a member of a sect immediately rival, 
and should make haste to take upon himself his ugly 

67 



68 FATHER DAMIEN 

office ere the bones are cold; unusual, and of a taste 
which I shall leave my readers free to qualify; un- 
usual, and to me inspiring. If I have at all learned 
the trade of using words to convey truth and to arouse 
emotion, you have at last furnished me with a sub- 
ject. For it is in the interest of all mankind and 
the cause of public decency in every quarter of the 
world, not only that Damien should be righted, but 
that you and your letter should be displayed at 
length, in their true colours, to the public eye. 

To do this properly, I must begin by quoting you 
at large: I shall then proceed to criticise your utter- 
ance from several points of view, divine and human, 
in the course of which I shall attempt to draw again 
and with more specification the character of the 
dead saint whom it has pleased you to vilify: so 
much being done, I shall say farewell to you for ever. 

^' Honoluluj August 2, 1889. 
"Rev. H. B. Gage. 

'' Dear Brother, — In answer to your inquiries about 
Father Damien, I can only reply that we who knew 
the man are surprised at the extravagant newspaper 
laudations, as if he was a most saintly philanthrop- 
ist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty 
man, headstrong and bigoted. He was not sent to 
Molokai, but went there without orders; did not 
stay at the leper settlement (before he became one 
himself), but circulated freely over the whole island 
(less than half the island is devoted to the lepers), 
and he came often to Honolulu. He had no hand 
in the reforms and improvements inaugurated, 



FATHER DAMIEN 69 

which were the work of our Board of Health, as 
occasion required and means were provided. He 
was not a pure man in his relations with women, 
and the leprosy of which he died should be attributed 
to his vices and carelessness. Others have done 
much for the lepers, our own ministers, the govern- 
ment physicians, and so forth, but never with the 
Catholic idea of meriting eternal life. — Yours, etc., 

"C. M. Hyde."^ 

To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary, I must 
draw at the outset on my private knowledge of the 
signatory and his sect. It may offend others; 
scarcely you, who have been so busy to collect, so 
bold to publish, gossip on your rivals. And this is 
perhaps the moment when I may best explain to 
you the character of what you are to read: I con- 
ceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reti- 
cences of civility: with what measure you mete, with 
that shall it be measured you again; with you, at 
last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to 
plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I 
should offend others, your colleagues, whom I re- 
spect and remember with affection, I can but offer 
them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the 
consideration of interests far more large; and such 
pain as can be inflicted by anything from me must 
be indeed trifling when compared with the pain with 
which they read your letter. It is not the hangman, 
but the criminal, that brings dishonour on the house. 

You belong, sir, to a sect — I believe my sect, and 
^ From the Sydney Presbyterian, October 26, 1889. 



70 FATHER DAMIEN 

that in which my ancestors laboured — which has en- 
joyed, and partly failed to utilise, an exceptional ad- 
vantage in the islands of Hawaii. The first mission- 
aries came; they found the land already self-purged 
of its old and bloody faith; they were embraced, 
almost on their arrival, with enthusiasm; what 
troubles they supported came far more from whites 
than from Hawaiians; and to these last they stood 
(in a rough figure) in the shoes of God. This is not 
the place to enter into the degree or causes of their 
failure, such as it is. One element alone is perti- 
nent, and must here be plainly dealt with. In the 
course of their evangelical calling, they — or too 
many of them — grew rich. It may be news to you 
that the houses of missionaries are a cause of mock- 
ing on the streets of Honolulu. It will at least be 
news to you, that when I returned your civil visit, 
the driver of my cab commented on the size, the 
taste, and the comfort of your home. It would have 
been news certainly to myself, had any one told me 
that afternoon that I should live to drag such matter 
into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade 
better men to your own level; and it is needful that 
those who are to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt 
Damien and the devil's advocate, should under- 
stand your letter to have been penned in a house 
which could raise, and that very justly, the envy 
and the comments of the passers-by. I think (to 
employ a phrase of yours which I admire) it "should 
be attributed" to you that you have never visited 
the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had, 
and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant 



FATHER DAMIEN 71 

rooms, even your pen perhaps would have been 
stayed. 

Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows 
me, it is mine) has not done ill in a worldly sense in 
the Hawaiian Kingdom. When calamity befell their 
innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended and 
took root in the Eight Islands, a quid pro quo was to 
be looked for. To 'that prosperous mission, and to 
you, as one of its adornments, God had sent at last 
an opportunity. I know I am touching here upon 
a nerve acutely sensitive. I know that others of 
your colleagues look back on the inertia of your 
Church, and the intrusive and decisive heroism of 
Damien, with something almost to be called re- 
morse. I am sure it is so with yourself; I am per- 
suaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy, 
not essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to 
be espied in that performance. You were thinking 
of the lost chance, the past day; of that which should 
have been conceived and was not; of the service 
due and not rendered. Time was, said the voice in 
your ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging 
and writing; and if the words written were base 
beyond parallel, the rage, I am happy to repeat — 
it is the only compliment I shall pay you — the rage 
was almost virtuous. But, sir, when we have failed, 
and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, 
and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow 
bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, un- 
couth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes 
of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the 
dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies 



72 FATHER DAMIEN 

upon the field of honour — the battle cannot be 
retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. 
It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing re- 
mained to you in your defeat — some rags of com- 
mon honour; and these you have made haste to cast 
away. 

Common honour; not the honour of having done 
anything right, but the honour of not having done 
aught conspicuously foul; the honour of the inert: 
that was what remained to you. We are not all 
expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his 
duty more narrowly, he may love his comforts better; 
and none will cast a stone at him for that. But will 
a gentleman of your reverend profession allow me 
an example from the fields of gallantry ? When two 
gentlemen compete for the favour of a lady, and the 
one succeeds and the other is rejected, and (as will 
sometimes happen) matter damaging to the success- 
ful rival's credit reaches the ear of the defeated, it is 
held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth 
is, in the circumstance, almost necessarily closed. 
Your Church and Damien's were in Hawaii upon a 
rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set divine 
examples. You having (in one huge instance) 
failed, and Damien succeeded, I marvel it should 
not have occurred to you that you were doomed to 
silence; that when you had been outstripped in that 
high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your 
well-being, in your pleasant room — and Damien, 
crowned with glories and horrors, toiled and rotted 
in that pigstye of his under the cliffs of Kalawao — 
you, the elect who would not, were the last man on 



FATHER DAMIEN 73 

earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volun- 
teer who would and did. 

I think I see you — for I try to see you in the flesh 
as I write these sentences — I think I see you leap 
at the word pigstye, a hyperbolical expression at the 
best. "He had no hand in the reforms," he was "a 
coarse, dirty man"; these were your own words; 
and you may think it possible that I am come to 
support you with fresh evidence. In a sense, it is 
even so. Damien has been too much depicted with 
a conventional halo and conventional features; so 
drawn by men who perhaps had not the eye to re- 
mark or the pen to express the individual; or who 
perhaps were only blinded and silenced by generous 
admiration, such as I partly envy for myself — such 
as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on 
your bended knees. It is the least defect of such 
a method of portraiture that it makes the path easy 
for the devil's advocate, and leaves for the misuse 
of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For 
the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest 
weapon of the enemy. The world, in your despite, 
may perhaps owe you something, if your letter be 
the means of substituting once for all a credible 
likeness for a wax abstraction. For, if that world 
;at all remember you, on the day when Damien of 
Molokai shall be named Saint, it will be in virtue 
of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage. 

You may ask on what authority I speak. It was 
my inclement destiny to become acquainted, not 
with Damien, but with Dr. Hyde. When I visited 
the lazaretto Damien was already in his resting 



74 FATHER DAMIEN 

grave. But such information as I have, I gathered 
on the spot in conversation with those who knew 
him well and long: some indeed who revered his 
memory; but others who had sparred and wrangled 
with him, who beheld him with no halo, who per- 
haps regarded him with small respect, and through 
whose unprepared and scarcely partial communica- 
tions the plain, human features of the man shone 
on me convincingly. These gave me what knowl- 
edge I possess; and I learnt it in that scene where it 
could be most completely and sensitively under- 
stood — Kalawao, which you have never visited, 
about which you have never so much as endeavoured 
to inform yourself: for, brief as your letter is, you 
have found the means to stumble into that confes- 
sion. ^^ Less than one-half of the island," you say, 
"is devoted to the lepers." Molokai — "Molokai 
ahinaj'^ the "grey," lofty, and most desolate island 
— along all its northern side plunges a front of 
precipice into a sea of unusual profundity. This 
range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and 
frontier of the island. Only in one spot there pro- 
jects into the ocean a certain triangular and rugged 
down, grassy, stony, windy, and rising in the midst 
into a hill with a dead crater: the whole bearing to 
the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same rela- 
tion as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will 
now be able to pick out the leper station on a map; 
you will be able to judge how much of Molokai is 
thus cut off between the surf and precipice, whether 
less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a 
tenth — or say, a twentieth; and the next time you 



FATHER DAMIEN 75 

burst into print you will be in a position to share 
with us the issue of your calculations. 

I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk 
with cheerfulness of that place which oxen and wain- 
ropes could not drag you to behold. You, who do 
not even know its situation on the map, probably 
denounce sensational descriptions, stretching your 
limbs the while in your pleasant parlour on Bere- 
tania Street. When I was pulled ashore there one 
early morning, there sat with me in the boat two 
sisters, bidding farewell (in humble imitation of 
Damien) to the lights and joys of human life. One 
of these wept silently; I could not withhold myself 
from joining her. Had you been there, it is my 
belief that nature would have triumphed even in 
you; and as the boat drew but a little nearer, and 
you beheld the stairs crowded with abominable 
deformations of our common manhood, and saw 
yourself landing in the midst of such a population as 
only now and then surrounds us in the horror of a 
nightmare -^ what a haggard eye you would have 
rolled over your reluctant shoulder towards the house 
on Beretania Street! Had you gone on; had you 
found every fourth face a blot upon the landscape; 
had you visited the hospital and seen the butt-ends of 
human beings lying there almost unrecognisable, but 
still breathing, still thinking, still remembering; you 
would' have understood that Hfe in the lazaretto is 
an ordeal from which the nerves of a man's spirit 
shrink, even as his eye quails under the brightness of 
the sun; you would have felt it was (even to-day) 
a pitiful place to visit and a hell to dwell in. It is 



76 FATHER DAMIEN 

not the fear of possible infection. That seems a 
little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, 
and the disgust of the visitor's surroundings, and the 
atmosphere of affliction, disease, and physical dis- 
grace in which he breathes. I do not think I am a 
man more than usually timid; but I never recall the 
days and nights I spent upon that island promontory 
(eight days and seven nights), without heartfelt 
thankfulness that I am somewhere else. I find in 
my diary that I speak of my stay as a "grinding 
experience": I have once jotted in the margin, 
''^Harrowing is the word"; and when the Mokolii 
bore me at last towards the outer world, I kept re- 
peating to myself, with a new conception of their 
pregnancy, those simple words of the song — 

*"Tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen." 

And observe: that which I saw and suffered from 
was a settlement purged, bettered, beautified; the 
new village built, the hospital and the Bishop-Home 
excellently arranged; the sisters, the doctor, and the 
missionaries, all indefatigable in their noble tasks. 
It was a different place when Damien came there, 
and made his great renunciation, and slept that first 
night under a tree amidst his rotting brethren: alone 
with pestilence; and looking forward (with what 
courage, with what pitiful sinkings of dread, God 
only knows) to a lifetime of dressing sores and 
stumps. 

You will say, perhaps, I am too sensitive, that 
sights as painful abound in cancer hospitals and are 



FATHER DAMIEN 77 

confronted daily by doctors and nurses. I have 
long learned to admire and envy the doctors and 
the nurses. But there is no cancer hospital so large 
and populous as Kalawao and Kalaupapa; and in 
such a matter every fresh case, like every inch of 
length in the pipe of an organ, deepens the note of 
the impression; for what daunts the onlooker is 
that monstrous sum of human suffering by which 
-he stands surrounded. Lastly, no doctor or nurse 
is called upon to enter once for all the doors of that 
gehenna; they do not say farewell, they need not 
abandon hope, on its sad threshold; they but go 
for a time to their high calling, and can look forward 
as they go to relief, to recreation, and to rest. But 
Damien shut to with his own hand the doors of his 
own sepulchre. 

I shall now extract three passages from my diary 
at Kalawao. 

A. "Damien is dead and already somewhat un- 
gratefully remembered in the field of his labours and 
sufferings. 'He was a good man, but very officious,' 
says one. Another tells me he had fallen (as other 
priests so easily do) into something of the ways and 
habits of thought of a Kanaka; but he had the wit 
to recognise the fact, and the good sense to laugh 
at" [over] "it. A plain man it seems he was; I 
cannot find he was a popular.'' 

B. "After Ragsdale's death" [Ragsdale was a 
famous Luna, or overseer, of the unruly settlement] 
"there followed a brief term of ofhce by Father 
Damien which served only to publish the weakness 
of that noble man. He was rough in his ways, and 



78 FATHER DAMIEN 

he had no control. Authority was relaxed; Damien's 
life was threatened, and he was soon eager to resign." 
C. "Of Damien I begin to have an idea. He 
seems to have been a man of the peasant class, cer- 
tainly of the peasant type: shrewd; ignorant and 
bigoted, yet with an open mind, and capable of re- 
ceiving and digesting a reproof if it were bluntly ad- 
ministered; superbly generous in the least thing as 
well as in the greatest, and as ready to give his last 
shirt (although not without human grumbling) as he 
had been to sacrifice his life; essentially indiscreet 
and officious, which made him a troublesome col- 
league; domineering in all his ways, which made 
him incurably unpopular with the Kanakas, but yet 
destitute of real authority, so that his boys laughed 
at him and he must carry out his wishes by the 
means of bribes. He learned to have a mania for 
doctoring; and set up the Kanakas against the 
remedies of his regular rivals: perhaps (if anything 
matter at all in the treatment of such a disease) the 
worst thing that he did, and certainly the easiest. 
The best and worst of the man appear very plainly 
in his dealings with Mr. Chapman's money; he had 
originally laid it out" [intended to lay it out] "en- 
tirely for the benefit of Catholics, and even so not 
wisely, but after a long, plain talk, he admitted his 
error fully and revised the list. The sad state of the 
boys' home is in part the result of his lack of control; 
in part, of his own slovenly ways and false ideas of 
hygiene. Brother officials used to call it ' Damien's 
Chinatown.' 'Well,' they would say, 'your China- 
town keeps growing.' And he would laugh with per- 



FATHER DAMIEN 79 

feet good-nature, and adhere to his errors with perfect 
obstinacy. So much I have gathered of truth about 
this plain, noble human brother and father of ours; 
his imperfections are the traits of his face, by which 
we know him for our fellow; his martyrdom and his 
example nothing can lessen or annul; and only a 
person here on the spot can properly appreciate 
their greatness." 

I have set down these private passages, as you 
perceive, without correction; thanks to you, the 
public has them in their bluntness. They are al- 
most a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these 
that I was seeking: with his virtues, with the heroic 
profile of his life, I and the world were already suffi- 
ciently acquainted. I was besides a little suspicious 
of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense, but merely 
because Damien's admirers and disciples were the 
least likely to be critical. I know you will be more 
suspicious still; and the facts set down above were 
one and all collected from the lips of Protestants 
who had opposed the father in his life. Yet I am 
strangely deceived, or they build up the image of 
a man, with all his weaknesses, essentially heroic, 
and alive with rugged honesty, generosity and 
mirth. 

Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the 
worst sides of Damien's character, collected from the 
lips of those who had laboured with and (in your 
own phrase) "knew the man"; — though I question 
whether Damien would have said that he knew you. 
Take it, and observe with wonder how well you were 
served by your gossips, how ill by your intelligence 



8o FATHER DAMIEN 

and sympathy; in how many points of fact we are 
at one, and how widely our appreciations vary. 
There is something wrong here; either with you or 
me. It is possible, for instance, that you, who seem 
to have so many ears in Kalawao, had heard of the 
affair of Mr. Chapman's money, and were singly 
struck by Damien's intended wrong-doing. I was 
struck with that also, and set it fairly down; but I 
was struck much more by the fact that he had the 
honesty of mind to be convinced. I may here tell 
you that it was a long business; that one of his col- 
leagues sat with him late into the night, multiplying 
arguments and accusations; that the father listened 
as usual with "perfect good-nature and perfect ob- 
stinacy"; but at the last, when he was persuaded — 
"Yes," said he, "I am very much obhged to you; 
you have done me a service; it would have been a 
theft." There are many (not Catholics merely) who 
require their heroes and saints to be infallible; to 
these the story will be painful ; not to the true lovers, 
patrons, and servants of mankind. 

And I take it, this is a type of our division; that 
you are one of those who have an eye for faults and 
failures; that you take a pleasure to find and publish 
them; and that, having found them, you make haste 
to forget the overvailing virtues and the real success 
which had alone introduced them to your knowledge. 
It is a dangerous frame of mind. That you may 
understand how dangerous, and into what a situa- 
tion it has already brought you, we will (if you please) 
go hand-in-hand through the different phrases of 
your letter, and candidly examine each from the 



FATHER DAMIEN 8i 

point of view of its truth, its appositeness, and its 
charity. 

Damien was coarse. 

It is very possible. You make us sorry for the 
lepers who had only a coarse old peasant for their 
friend and father. But you, who were so refined, 
why were you not there, to cheer them with the 
lights of culture? Or may I remind you that we 
have some reason to doubt if John the Baptist were 
genteel; and in the case of Peter, on whose career 
you doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no 
doubt at all he was a "coarse, headstrong" fisher- 
man! Yet even in our Protestant Bibles Peter is 
called Saint. 

Damien was dirty. 

He was. Think of the poor lepers annoyed with 
this dirty comrade! But the clean Dr. Hyde was 
at his food in a fine house. 

Damien was headstrong, 

I believe you are right again; and I thank God 
for his strong head and heart. 

Damien was bigoted. 

I am not fond of bigots myself, because they are 
not fond of me. But what is meant by bigotry, that 
we should regard it as a blemish in a priest? Da- 
mien believed his own religion with the simplicity 
of a peasant or a child; as I would I could suppose 
that you do. For this, I wonder at him some way 



82 FATHER DAMIEN 

off; and had that been his only character, should 
have avoided him in life. But the point of interest 
in Damien, which has caused him to be so much 
talked about and made him at last the subject of 
your pen and mine, was that, in him, his bigotry, 
his intense and narrow faith, wrought potently for 
good, and strengthened him to be one of the world's 
heroes and exemplars. 

Damien was not sent to Molokai, hut went there 
without orders. 

Is this a misreading? or do you really mean the 
words for blame? I have heard Christ, in the pul- 
pits of our Church, held up for imitation on the 
ground that His sacrifice was voluntary. Does Dr. 
Hyde think otherwise? 

Damien did not stay at the settlement ^ etc. 

It is true he was allowed many indulgences. Am 
I to understand that you blame the father for profit- 
ing by these, or the officers for granting them? In 
either case, it is a mighty Spartan standard to issue 
from the house on Beretania Street; and I am con- 
vinced you will find yourself with few supporters. 

Damien had no hand in the reforms, etc. 

I think even you will admit that I have already 
been frank in my description of the man I am de- 
fending; but before I take you up upon this head, I 
will be franker still, and tell you that perhaps nowhere 
in the world can a man taste a more pleasurable 
sense of contrast than when he passes from Damien's 



FATHER DAMIEN 83 

"Chinatown" at Kalawao to the beautiful Bishop- 
Home at Kalaupapa. At this point, in my desire to 
make all fair for you, I will break my rule and adduce 
Catholic testimony. Here is a passage from my 
diary about my visit to the Chinatown, from which 
you will see how it is (even now) regarded by its own 
officials: "We went round all the dormitories, re- 
fectories, etc. — dark and dingy enough, with a 
superficial cleanliness, which he" [Mr. Button, the 
lay brother] "did not seek to defend. 'It is almost 
decent,' said he; 'the sisters will make that all right 
when we get them here.' " And yet I gathered it 
was already better since Damien was dead, and far 
better than when he was there alone and had his 
own (not always excellent) way. I have now come 
far enough to meet you on a common ground of fact; 
and I tell you that, to a mind not prejudiced by 
jealousy, all the reforms of the lazaretto, and even 
those which he most vigorously opposed, are properly 
the work of Damien. They are the evidence of his 
success; they are what his heroism provoked from 
the reluctant and the careless. Many were before 
him in the field; Mr. Meyer, for instance, of whose 
faithful work we hear too little: there have been 
many since; and some had more worldly wisdom, 
though none had more devotion, than our saint. 
Before his day, even you will confess, they had 
effected little. It was his part, by one striking act 
of martyrdom, to direct all men's eyes on that dis- 
tressful country. At a blow, and with the price of 
his life, he made the place illustrious and public. 
And that, if you will consider largely, was the one 



84 FATHER DAMIEN 

reform needful; pregnant of all that should succeed. 
It brought money; it brought (best individual addi- 
tion of them all) the sisters; it brought supervision, 
for public opinion and public interest landed with 
the man at Kalawao. If ever any man brought re- 
forms, and died to bring them, it was he. There is 
not a clean cup or towel in the Bishop-Home, but 
dirty Damien washed it. 

Damien was not a pure man in his relations with 
women, etc. 

How do you know that ? Is this the nature of the 
conversation in that house on Beretania Street which 
the cabman envied, driving past ? — racy details of 
the misconduct of the poor peasant priest, toiling 
under the cliffs of Molokai ? 

Many have visited the station before me; they 
seem not to have heard the rumour. When I was 
there I heard many shocking tales, for my informants 
were men speaking with the plainness of the laity; 
and I heard plenty of complaints of Damien. Why 
was this never mentioned? and how came it to you 
in the retirement of your clerical parlour? 

But I must not even seem to deceive you. This 
scandal, when I read it in your letter, was not new 
to me. I had heard it once before; and I must tell 
you how. There came to Samoa a man from Hono- 
lulu; he, in a public-house on the beach, volunteered 
the statement that Damien had "contracted the 
disease from having connection with the female 
lepers"; and I find a joy in telling you how the re- 
port was welcomed in a public-house. A man 



FATHER DAMIEN 85 

sprang to his feet; I am not at liberty to give his 
name, but from what I heard I doubt if you would 
care to have him to dinner in Beretania Street. 

"You miserable little " (here is a word I dare 

not print, it would so shock your ears). "You 

miserable httle ," he cried, "if the story were a 

thousand times true, can't you see you are a million 

times a lower for daring to repeat it?" I wish 

it could be told of you that when the report reached 
you in your house, perhaps after family worship, you 
had found in your soul enough holy anger to receive 
it with the same expressions: ay, even with that one 
which I dare not print; it would not need to have 
been blotted away, like Uncle Toby's oath, by the 
tears of the recording angel; it would have been 
counted to you for your brightest righteousness. 
But you have deliberately chosen the part of the 
man from Honolulu, and you have played it with 
improvements of your own. The man from Hono- 
lulu — miserable, leering creature — communicated 
the tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in 
a public-house, where (I will so far agree with youi 
temperance opinions) man is not always at his 
noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself 
been drinking — drinking, we may charitably fancy, 
to excess. It was to your "Dear Brother, the Rev- 
erend H. B. Gage," that you chose to communicate 
the sickening story; and the blue ribbon which 
adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you 
the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it 
was done. Your " dear brother " — a brother indeed 
— made haste to deliver up your letter (as a means 



86 FATHER DAMIEN 

of grace, perhaps) to the religious papers; where, 
after many months, I found and read and wondered 
at it; and whence I have now reproduced it for the 
wonder of others. And you and your dear brother 
have, by this cycle of operations, built up a contrast 
very edifying to examine in detail. The man whom 
you would not care to have to dinner, on the one 
side; on the other, the Reverend Dr. Hyde and the 
Reverend H. B. Gage: the Apia bar-room, the Hon- 
olulu manse. 

But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear 
to your fellow-men; and to bring it home to you, I 
will suppose your story to be true. I will suppose — 
and God forgive me for supposing it — that Damien 
faltered and stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I 
will suppose that, in the horror of his isolation, per- 
haps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who was 
doing so much more than he had sworn, failed in 
the letter of his priestly oath — he, who was so much 
a better man than either you or me, who did what 
we have never dreamed of daring — he too tasted of 
our common frailty. "O, lago, the pity of it!" 
The least tender should be moved to tears; the most 
incredulous to prayer. And all that you could do 
was to pen your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage! 

Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you 
have drawn of your own heart ? I will try yet once 
again to make it clearer. You had a father: sup- 
pose this tale were about him, and some informant 
brought it to you, proof in hand: I am not making 
too high an estimate of your emotional nature when 
I suppose you would regret the circumstance? that 



FATHER DAMIEN 87 

you would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly 

since it shamed the author of your days? and that 

the last thing you would do would be to publish it 

in the religious press? Well, the man who tried to 

do what Damien did, is my father, and the father 

of the man in the Apia bar, and the father 

of all who love goodness; and he 

was your father too, if God had 

given you grace to see it. 



THE PENTLAND RISING 

A PAGE OF HISTORY 

1666 

"A cloud 0} witnesses ly here, 
Who for Christ's ■interest did appear." 

Inscription on Battle-field at Rullion Green. 



THE PENTLAND RISING 

I. THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLT 

"Halt, passenger; fake heed what thou dost see, 
This tomb doth show for what some men did die" 
Monument, Greyfriars' Churchyard, Edinburgh, 1661-1668.' 

TWO hundred years ago a tragedy was enacted 
in Scotland, the memory whereof has been 
in great measure lost or obscured by the 
deeper tragedies which followed it. It is, as it were, 
the evening of the night of persecution — a sort of 
twilight, dark indeed to us, but light as the noonday 
when compared with the midnight gloom which fol- 
lowed. This fact, of its being the very threshold of 
persecution, lends it, however, an additional interest. 
The prejudices of the people against Episcopacy 
were "out of measure increased," says Bishop 
Burnet, "by the new incumbents, who were put in 
the place of the ejected preachers, and were generally 
very mean and despicable in all respects. They 
were the worst preachers I ever heard; they were 
ignorant to a reproach; and many of them were 
openly vicious. They were indeed the dregs and 
refuse of the northern parts. Those of them who 
rose above contempt or scandal were men of such 
violent tempers that they were as much hated as the 

1 Theatre of Mortality, p. 10, Edin. 1713. 
91 



92 THE PENTLAND RISING 

others were despised." ^ It was little to be wondered 
at, from this account, that the countryfolk refused to 
go to the parish church, and chose rather to listen 
to outed ministers in the field. But this was not to 
be allowed, and their persecutors at last fell on the 
method of calling a roll of the parishioners' names 
every Sabbath and marking a fine of twenty shillings 
Scots to the name of each absenter. In this way 
very large debts were incurred by persons altogether 
unable to pay. Besides this, landlords were fined 
for their tenants' absences, tenants for their land- 
lords, masters for their servants, servants for their 
masters, even though they themselves were perfectly 
regular in their attendance. And as the curates 
were allowed to fine with the sanction of any com- 
mon soldier, it may be imagined that often the pre- 
texts were neither very sufiicient nor well proven. 

When the fines could not be paid at once, bibles, 
clothes, and household utensils were seized upon, or 
a number of soldiers, proportionate to his wealth, 
were quartered on the offender. The coarse and 
drunken privates filled the houses with woe; snatched 
the bread from the children to feed their dogs; 
shocked the principles, scorned the scruples, and 
blasphemed the religion of their humble hosts; and 
when they had reduced them to destitution, sold the 
furniture, and burned down the roof-tree, which 
was consecrated to the peasants by the name of 
Home. For all this attention each of these soldiers 
received from his unwilling landlord a certain sum 

1 History of my Own Times, beginning 1660, by Bishop Gilbert 
Burnet, p. 158. 



THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLT 93 

of money per day — three shillings sterling, accord- 
ing to "Naphtali." And frequently they were forced 
to pay quartering money for more men than were 
in reality "cessed" on them. At that time it was no 
strange thing to behold a strong man begging for 
money to pay his fines, and many others who were 
deep in arrears, or who had attracted attention in 
some other way, were forced to flee from their homes, 
and take refuge from arrest and imprisonment among 
the wild mosses of the uplands/ 

One example in particular we may cite: — 
John Nielson, the Laird of Corsack, a worthy 
man, was, unfortunately for himself, a Noncon- 
formist. First he was fined in four hundred pounds 
Scots, and then through cessing he lost nineteen 
hundred and ninety-three pounds Scots. He was 
next obliged to leave his house and flee from place 
to place, during which wanderings he lost his horse. 
His wife and children were turned out of doors, and 
then his tenants were fined till they too were almost 
all ruined. As a final stroke, they drove away all 
his cattle to Glasgow and sold them.^ Surely it was 
time that something were done to alleviate so much 
sorrow, to overthrow such tyranny. 

About this time too there arrived in Galloway a 
person calling himself Captain Andrew Gray, and 
advising the people to revolt. He displayed some 
documents purporting to be from the northern Cov- 
enanters, and stating that they were prepared to 
join in any enterprise commenced by their southern 

1 Wodrow's Church History, book ii. chap. i. sect. i. 

2 Cruickshank's Church History, 1751, 2d edit. p. 202. 



94 THE PENTLAND RISING 

brethren. The leader of the persecutors was Sir 
James Turner, an officer afterwards degraded for 
his share in the matter. "He was naturally fierce, 
but was mad when he was drunk, and that was very 
often," said Bishop Burnet. "He was a learned 
man, but had always been in armies, and knew no 
other rule but to obey orders. He told me he had 
no regard to any law, but acted, as he was com- 
manded, in a military way." ^ 

This was the state of matters, when an outrage 
was committed which gave spirit and determination 
to the oppressed countrymen, lit the flame of in- 
subordination, and for the time at least recoiled on 
those who perpetrated it with redoubled force. 



IL THE BEGINNING 

I love no warres, I J it must he, 

I love no jarres, Warre we must see 

Nor strife's fire. (So fates conspire), 

May discord cease, . May we not feel 

Let's live in peace: The force of steel: 

This I desire. This I desire. 

T. Jackson, 1651.2 

Upon Tuesday, November 13th, 1666, Corporal 
George Deanes and three other soldiers set upon an 
old man in the Clachan of Dairy, and demanded the 
payment of his fines. On the old man's refusing to 
pay, they forced a large party of his neighbours to go 
with them and thresh his corn. The field was a 

1 Burnet, p. 348. 

2 Fuller's Historic of the Holy Warre. 4th edit. 1651. 



THE BEGINNING 95 

certain distance out of the clachan, and four per- 
sons, disguised as countrymen, who had been out 
on the moors all night, met this mournful drove of 
slaves, compelled by the four soldiers to work for 
the ruin of their friend. However, chilled to the 
bone by their night on the hills, and worn out by 
want of food, they proceeded to the village inn to 
refresh themselves. Suddenly some people rushed 
into the room where they were sitting, and told 
them that the soldiers were about to roast the old 
man, naked, on his own girdle. This was too much 
for them to stand, and they repaired immediately to 
the scene of this gross outrage, and at first merely 
requested that the captive should be released. On 
the refusal of the two soldiers who were in the front 
room, high words were given and taken on both 
sides, and the other two rushed forth from an ad- 
joining chamber and made at the countrymen with 
drawn swords. One of the latter, John M'Lellan 
of Barskob, drew a pistol and shot the corporal in 
the body. 'The pieces of tobacco pipe with which 
it was loaded, to the number of ten at least, entered 
him, and he was so much disturbed that he never 
appears to have recovered, for we find long after- 
wards a petition to the Privy Council requesting a 
pension for him. The other soldiers then laid down 
their arms, the old man was rescued, and the re- 
bellion was commenced.^ 

And now we must turn to Sir James Turner's 
memoirs of himself; for, strange to say, this extraor- 
dinary man was remarkably fond of literary com- 

1 Wodrow, vol. II. p. 17. 



96 THE PENTLAND RISING 

position, and wrote, besides the amusing account of 
his own adventures just mentioned, a large number 
of essays and short biographies, and a work on war, 
entitled "Pallas Armata." The following are some 
of the shorter pieces: — "Magick," "Friendship," 
"Imprisonment," "Anger," "Revenge," "Duells," 
"Cruelty," "A Defence of some of the Ceremo- 
nies of the English Liturgie, to wit • — Bowing at the 
Name of Jesus, The frequent repitition of the Lord's 
Prayer and Good Lord deliver us. Of the Doxologie, 
Of Surplesses, Rotchets, Cannonicall Coats," etc. 
From what we know of his character we should ex- 
pect "Anger" and "Cruelty" to be very full and 
instructive. But what earthly right he had to med- 
dle with ecclesiastical subjects it is hard to see. 

Upon the 12th of the month he had received some 
information concerning Gray's proceedings, but as 
it was excessively indefinite in its character, he paid 
no attention to it. On the evening of the 14th, 
Corporal Deanes was brought into Dumfries, who 
affirmed stoutly that he had been shot while refu- 
sing to sign the Covenant — a story rendered singu- 
larly unlikely by the after conduct of the rebels. 
Sir James instantly despatched orders to the cessed 
soldiers either to come to Dumfries, or meet him on 
the way to Dairy, and commanded the thirteen or 
fourteen men in the town with him to come at nine 
next morning to his lodging for supplies. 

On the morning of Thursday the rebels arrived at 
Dumfries, with 50 horse and 150 foot. Nielson of 
Corsack, and Gray, who commanded, with a con- 
siderable troop, entered the town, and surrounded 



THE BEGINNING 97 

Sir James Turner's lodging. Though it was be- 
tween eight and nine o'clock, that worthy, being 
unwell, was still in bed, but rose at once and went 
to the window. 

Nielson and some others cried — " You may have 
fair quarter." "I need no quarter," replied Sir 
James; "nor can I be a prisoner, seeing there is no 
war declared." On being told, however, that he 
must either be a prisoner, or die, he came down and 
went into the street in his night-shirt. Here Gray 
showed himself very desirous of killing him, but he 
was overruled by Corsack. However, he was taken 
away a prisoner. Captain Gray mounting him on his 
own horse, though, as Turner naively remarks, 
"there was a good reason for it, for he mounted 
himself on a farre better one of mine." A large 
coffer containing his clothes and money, together 
with all his papers, were taken away by the rebels. 
They robbed Master Chalmers, the Episcopalian 
minister of Dumfries, of his horses, drank the King's 
health at the market-cross, and then left Dumfries.^ 

1 Sir J. Turner's Memoirs, pp. 148-150. 



98 THE PENTLAND RISING 

III. THE MARCH OF THE REBELS 

"Stay, passenger, take notice what thou reads, 
At Edinburgh lie our bodies, here our heads; 
Our right hands stood at Lanark, these we want. 
Because with them we signed the Covena^it." 

Epitaph on a Tombstone at Hamilton. i 

On Friday the i6th, Bailie Irvine of Dumfries 
came to the Council at Edinburgh, and gave infor- 
mation concerning this "horrid rebellion." In the 
absence of Rothes, Sharpe presided — much to the 
wrath of some members; and as he imagined his 
own safety endangered, his measures were most 
energetic. Dalzell was ordered away to the west, 
the guards round the city were doubled, officers and 
soldiers were forced to take the oath of allegiance, 
and all lodgers were commanded to give in their 
names. Sharpe, surrounded with all these guards 
and precautions, trembled — trembled as he trem- 
bled when the avengers of blood drew him from his 
chariot on Magus Muir, — for he knew how he had 
sold his trust, how he had betrayed his charge, and 
he felt that against him must their chiefest hatred 
be directed, against him their direst thunderbolts be 
forged. But even in his fear the apostate Presby- 
terian was unrelenting, unpityingly harsh; he pub- 
lished in his manifesto no promise of pardon, no 
inducement to submission. He said, "If you sub- 
mit not you must die," but never added, "If you 
submit you may live!" ^ 

* A Cloud of Witnesses, p. 376. 

* Wodrow, pp. 19, 20. 



THE MARCH OF THE REBELS 99 

Meantime the insurgents proceeded on their way. 
At Carsphairn they were deserted by Captain Gray, 
who, doubtless in a fit of oblivion, neglected to leave 
behind him the coffer containing Sir James's money. 
Who he was is a mystery, unsolved by any historian; 
his papers were evidently forgeries — that, and his 
final flight, appear to indicate that he was an agent 
of the Royalists, for either the King or the Duke of 
York was heard to say — ''That, if he might have 
his wish, he would have them all turn rebels and go 
to arms." ^ 

Upon the i8th day of the month they left Cars- 
phairn and marched onwards. 

Turner was always lodged by his captors at a 
good inn, frequently at the best of which their halt- 
ing-place could boast. Here many visits were paid 
to him by the ministers and officers of the insurgent 
force. In his description of these interviews he dis- 
plays a vein of satiric severity, admitting any kind- 
ness that was done to him with some qualifying 
souvenir of former harshness, and gloating over any 
injury, mistake, or folly which it was his chance to 
suffer or to hear. He appears, notwithstanding all 
this, to have been on pretty good terms with his cruel 
" phanaticks," as the following extract sufficiently 
proves : — 

"Most of the foot were lodged about the church 
or churchyard, and order given to ring bells next 
morning for a sermon to be preached by Mr. Welch. 
Maxwell of Morith, and Major M'Cullough invited 
me to heare 'that phanatick sermon' (for soe they 

» A Hind Let Loose, p. 123. 



100 THE PENTLAND RISING 

merrilie called it). They said that preaching might 
prove an effectual meane to turne me, which they 
heartilie wished. I answered to them that I was 
under guards, and that if they intended to heare 
that sermon, it was probable I might likewise, for it 
was not like my guards wold goe to church and 
leave me alone at my lodgeings. Bot to what they 
said of my conversion, I said, it wold be hard to 
turne a Turner. Bot because I founde them in a 
merrie humour, I said, if I did not come to heare 
Mr. Welch preach, then they might fine me in fortie 
shillings Scots, which was duoble the suome of what 
I had exacted from the phanatics." ^ This took 
place at Ochiltree, on the 2 2d day of the month. 
The following is recounted by this personage with 
malicious glee, and certainly, if authentic, it is a sad 
proof of how chaff is mixed with wheat, and how 
ignorant, almost impious, persons were engaged in 
this movement; nevertheless we give it, for we wish 
to present with impartiality all the alleged facts to 
the reader: — 

"Towards the evening Mr. Robinsone and Mr. 
Crukshank gaue me a visite; I called for some ale 
purposelie to heare one of them blesse it. It fell Mr. 
Robinsone to seeke the blessing, who said one of the 
most bombastick graces that ever I heard in my 
life. He summoned God Allmightie very imperi- 
ouslie to be their secondarie (for that was his lan- 
guage). ^And if,' said he 'thou wilt not be our 
Secondarie, we will not fight for thee at all, for it is 
not our cause bot thy cause; and if thou wilt not 

1 Sir J. Turner, p. 163. 



THE MARCH OF THE REBELS loi 

fight for our cause and thy oune cause, then we are 
not obhged to fight for it. They say/ said he, 'that 
Dukes, Earles, and Lords are coming with the King's 
General against us, bot they shall be nothing bot a 
threshing to us.' This grace did more fullie satisfie 
me of the folly and injustice of their cause, than the 
ale did quench my thirst." ^ 

Frequently the rebels made a halt near some road- 
side ale-house, or in some convenient park, where 
Colonel Wallace, who had now taken the command, 
would review the horse and foot, during which time 
Turner was sent either into the ale-house or round 
the shoulder of a hill, to prevent him from seeing the 
disorders which were likely to arise. He was, at 
last, on the 25th day of the month, between Douglas 
and Lanark, permitted to behold their evolutions. 
" I found their horse did consist of four hundreth and 
fortie, and the foot of five hundreth and upwards. 
. . . The horsemen were armed for most part with 
suord and pistoll some onlie with suord. The foot 
with musket, pike, sith (scythe), forke, and suord; 
and some with suords great and long." He ad- 
mired much the proficiency of their cavalry, and 
marvelled how they had attained to it in so short a 
time.^ 

At Douglas, which they had just left on the morn- 
ing of this great wapinschaw, they were charged — 
awful picture of depravity! — with the theft of a 
silver spoon and a nightgown. Could it be ex- 
pected that while the whole country swarmed with 
robbers of every description, such a rS.re opportunity 

1 Turner, p. 198. 2 ibid., p. 167. 



102 THE PENTLAND RISING 

for plunder should be lost by rogues — that among 
a thousand men, even though fighting for religion, 
there should not be one Achan in the camp? At 
Lanark a declaration was drawn up and signed by 
the chief rebels. In it occurs the following: — 

"The just sense whereof" — the sufferings of the country — 
"made us choose, rather to betake ourselves to the fields for 
self-defence, than to stay at home, burdened daily with the ca- 
lamities of others, and tortured with the fears of our own ap- 
proaching misery." ^ 

The whole body, too, swore the Covenant, to 
which ceremony the epitaph at the head of this 
chapter seems to refer. 

A report that Dalzell was approaching drove them 
from Lanark to Bathgate, where, on the evening of 
Tuesday the 26th, the wearied army stopped. But 
at twelve o'clock the cry, which served them for a 
trumpet, of "Horse! horse!" and "Mount the pris- 
oner!" resounded through the night-shrouded town, 
and called the peasants from their well-earned 
rest to toil onwards in their march. The wind 
howled fiercely over the moorland; a close, thick, 
wetting rain descended. Chilled to the bone, worn 
out with long fatigue, sinking to the knees in mire, 
onward they marched to destruction. One by one 
the weary peasants fell off from their ranks to sleep, 
and die in the rain-soaked moor, or to seek some 
house by the wayside wherein to hide till daybreak. 
One by one at first, then in gradually increasing 
numbers, till at last, at every shelter that was seen, 

1 Wodrow, p. 29. 



THE MARCH OF THE REBELS 103 

whole troops left the waning squadrons, and rushed 
to hide themselves from the ferocity of the tempest. 
To right and left nought could be descried but the 
broad expanse of the moor, and the figures of their 
fellow-rebels, seen dimly through the murky night, 
plodding onwards through the sinking moss. Those 
who kept together — a miserable few — often halted 
to rest themselves, and to allow their lagging com- 
rades to overtake them. Then onward they went 
again, still hoping for assistance, reinforcement, and 
supplies; onward again, through the wind, and the 
rain, and the darkness — onward to their defeat at 
Pentland, and their scaffold at Edinburgh. It was 
calculated that they lost one-half of their army on 
that disastrous night march. 

Next night they reached the village of Colinton, 
four miles from Edinburgh, where they halted for 
the last time.^ 

1 Turner, Wodrow, and Church History, by James Kirkton, an 
outed minister of the period. 



104 THE PENTLAND RISING 



IV. RULLION GREEN 

''From Covenanters with uplifted hands, 
From remonstrators with associate bands, 
Good Lord, deliver us." 

Royalist Rhyme, Kirkton, p. 127 

Late on the fourth night of November, exactly 
twenty-four days before Rullion Green, Richard and 
George Chaplain, merchants in Haddington, beheld 
four men, clad like west country Whigamores, 
standing round some object on the ground. It was 
at the two-mile cross, and within that distance from 
their homes. At last, to their horror, they discov- 
ered that the recumbent figure was a livid corpse 
swathed in a blood-stained winding-sheet.^ Many 
thought that this apparition was a portent of the 
deaths connected with the Pentland Rising. 

On the morning of Thursday, the 28th of Novem- 
ber 1666, they left Colinton and marched to Rullion 
Green. There they arrived about sunset. The posi- 
tion was a strong one. On the summit of a bare 
heathery spur of the Pendands are two hillocks, 
and between them lies a narrow band of flat marshy 
ground. On the highest of the two mounds — that 
nearest the Pentlands, and on the left hand of the 
main body — was the greater part of the cavalry, 
under Major Learmont; on the other Barskob and 
the Galloway gentlemen; and in the centre Colonel 
Wallace and the weak half-armed infantry. Their 
position was further strengthened by the depth of 

1 Kirkton, p. 244. 



RULLION GREEN 105 

the valley below, and the deep chasm-like course of 
the Rullion Burn. 

The sun, going down behind the Pentlands, cast 
golden lights and blue shadows on their snow-clad 
summits, slanted obliquely into the rich plain before 
them, bathing with rosy splendour the leafless, snow- 
sprinkled trees, and fading gradually into shadow 
in the distance. To the south, too, they beheld a 
deep-shaded amphitheatre of heather and bracken; 
the course of the Esk, near Penicuik, winding about 
at the foot of its gorge; the broad, brown expanse 
of Maw moss; and, fading into blue indistinctness 
in the south, the wild heath-clad Peeblesshire hills. 
In sooth, that scene was fair, and many a yearning 
glance was cast over that peaceful evening scene 
from the spot where the rebels awaited their defeat; 
and when the fight was over, many a noble fellow 
lifted his head from the blood-stained heather to 
strive with darkening eyeballs to behold that land- 
scape, over which, as o'er his life and his cause, the 
shadows of night and of gloom were falling and 
thickening. 

It was while waiting on this spot that the fear- 
inspiring cry was raised, "The enemy! — Here comes 
the enemy!" 

Unwilling to believe their own doom — for our 
insurgents still hoped for success in some negotia- 
tions for peace which had been carried on at Colin- 
ton — they called out, — ''They are some other of 
our own." 

"They are too blacke" {i. e., too numerous), "fie! 
fie! for ground to draw up on," cried Wallace, fully 



io6 THE PENTLAND RISING 

realising the want of space for his men, and proving 
that it was not till after this time that his forces were 
finally arranged/ 

First of all the battle was commenced by fifty 
royalist horse sent obliquely across the hill to attack 
the left wing of the rebels. An equal number of 
Learmont's men met them, and, after a struggle, 
drove them back. The course of the Rulhon Burn 
prevented almost all pursuit, and Wallace, on per- 
ceiving it, despatched a body of foot to occupy both 
the burn and some ruined sheep walls on the farther 
side. 

Dalzell changed his position and drew up his army 
at the foot of the hill, on the top of which were his 
foes. He then despatched a mingled body of in- 
fantry and cavalry to attack Wallace's outpost, but 
they also were driven back. A third charge pro- 
duced a still more disastrous effect, for Dalzell had 
to check the pursuit of his men by a reinforcement. 

These repeated checks bred a panic in the lieu- 
tenant-general's ranks, for several of his men flung 
down their arms. Urged by such fatal symptoms, 
and by the aproaching night, he deployed his men 
and closed in overwhelming numbers on the centre 
and right flank of the insurgent army. In the in- 
creasing twilight the burning matches of the fire- 
locks, shimmering on barrel, halbert, and cuirass, 
lent to the approaching army a picturesque effect, 
like a huge many-armed giant breathing flame into 
the darkness. 

Placed on an overhanging hill, Welch and Semple 

' Kirkton. 



RULLION GREEN 107 

cried aloud, "The God of Jacob! The God of 
Jacob!" and prayed with upHfted hands for victory.^ 

But still the royalist troops closed in. 

Captain John Paton was observed by Dalzell, who 
determined to capture him with his own hands. 
Accordingly, he charged forward presenting his 
pistols. Paton fired, but the balls hopped off Dal- 
zell's buff coat and fell into his boot. With the 
superstition peculiar to his age, the Nonconformist 
concluded that his adversary was rendered bullet- 
proof by enchantment, and pulling some small silver 
coins from his pockets, charged his pistol therewith. 
Dalzell, seeing this, and supposing, it is likely, that 
Paton was putting in larger balls, hid behind his 
servant, who was killed.^ 

Meantime the outposts were forced, and the army 
of Wallace was enveloped in the embrace of a hideous 
boa-constrictor — tightening, closing, crushing every 
semblance of life from the victim enclosed in his 
toils. The flanking parties of horse were forced in 
upon the centre, and though, as even Turner grants, 
they fought with desperation, a general flight was 
the result. 

But when they fell there was none to sing their 
coronach or wail the death-wail over them. Those 
who sacrificed themselves for the peace, the liberty, 
and the religion of their fellow-countrymen, lay 
bleaching in the field of death for long, and when at 
last they were buried by charity, the peasants dug 
up their bodies, desecrated their graves, and cast 

* Turner. 

* Kirkton, p. 244. 



io8 THE PENTLAND RISING 

them once more upon the open heath for the sorry 
value of their winding-sheets! 

Inscription on stone at Rulhon Green. 

Here 
and near to 
this place lyes the 
reuerend Mr. John Crookshanks 
and Mr. Andrew M'Cormock 
ministers of the Gospel, and 
about fifty other true coven- 
anted Presbyterians who were 
killed in this place in their own 
innocent self-defence and def- 
fence of the Covenanted 
Work of Reformation by 
Thomas Dalzel of Bins 
Upon 28 November 
1666. Rev. 12. II. Erected 
September 28. 1738. 

Back of stone. 

A cloud of witnesses ly here, 

Who for Christ's interest did appear, 

For to restore true liberty, 

O'erturned then by tyrany; 

And by proud prelats who did rage 

Against the Lord's own heritage; 

They sacrific'd were for the laws 

Of Christ their King, his noble cause, 

These heros fought with great renown 

By falling got the martyrs crown. ^ 

' Kirkton, p. 246. 



A RECORD OF BLOOD 109 



V. A RECORD OF BLOOD 

^^They cut his hands ere he was dead, 
And ajter that struck off his head. 
His blood under tlie altar cries, 
For vengeance on Christ's enemies." 

Epitaph on Tomb at Longcross of Clermont. i 

Master Andrew Murray, an outed minister re- 
siding in the Potterrow, on the morning after the de- 
feat, heard the sounds of cheering and the march 
of many feet beneath his window. He gazed out. 
With colours flying, and with music sounding, Dal- 
zell victorious entered Edinburgh. But his banners 
were dyed in blood, and a band of prisoners were 
marched within his ranks. The old man knew it 
all. That martial and triumphant strain was the 
death-knell of his friends and of their cause, the rust- 
hued spots upon the flags were the tokens of their 
courage and their death, and the prisoners were the 
miserable remnant spared from death in battle to 
die upon the scaffold. Poor old man! he had out- 
lived all joy. Had he lived longer he would have 
seen increasing torment and increasing woe; he 
would have seen the clouds, then but gathering in 
mist, cast a more than midnight darkness o'er his 
native hills, and have fallen a victim to those bloody 
persecutions which, later, sent their red memorials 
to the sea by many a burn. By a merciful Provi- 
dence all this was spared to him — he fell beneath 
the first blow: and ere four days had passed since 

» Cloud of Witnesses, p. 389. Edin. 1765. 



no THE PENTLAND RISING 

Rullion Green, the aged minister of God was gath- 
ered to his fathers.^ 

When Sharpe first heard of the rebelHon, he ap- 
phed to Sir Alexander Ramsay, the Provost, for 
soldiers to guard his house. Disliking their occu- 
pation, the soldiers gave him an ugly time of it. 
All the night through they kept up a continuous se- 
ries of "alarms and incursions," cries of "Stand!" 
"Give fire!" etc., which forced the prelate to flee to 
the castle in the morning, hoping there to find the 
rest which was denied him at home.^ Now, however, 
when all danger to himself was past, Sharpe came 
out in his true colours, and scant was the justice 
likely to be shown to the foes of Scotch Episcopacy 
when the Primate was by. The prisoners were 
lodged in Haddo's Hole, a part of St. Giles's Cathe- 
dral, where, by the kindness of Bishop Wishart, to 
his credit be it spoken, they were amply supplied 
with food.^ 

Some people urged, in the council, that the promise 
of quarter which had been given on the field of battle 
should protect the lives of the miserable men. Sir 
John Gilmore, the greatest lawyer, gave no opinion 
— certainly a suggestive circumstance, — but Lord 
Lee declared that this would not interfere with their 
legal trial; "so to bloody executions they went." * 
To the number of thirty they were condemned and 
executed; while two of them, Hugh M'Kail, a young 
minister, and Nielson of Corsack, were tortured with 
the boots. 

1 Kirkton, p. 247. 2 Ibid., p. 254. 

3 Ibid., p. 247. * Ibid., pp. 247, 248. 



A RECORD OF BLOOD in 

The goods of those who perished were confiscated, 
and their bodies were dismembered and distributed 
to different parts of the country; "the heads of Major 
M'Culloch and the two Gordons," it was resolved, 
says Kirkton, ''should be pitched on the gate of 
Kirkcudbright; the two Hamiltons and Strong's 
head should be affixed at Hamilton, and Captain 
Arnot's sett on the Watter Gate at Edinburgh. 
The armes of all the ten, because they hade with up- 
lifted hands renewed the Covenant at Lanark, were 
sent to the people of that town to expiate that crime, 
by placing these armes on the top of the prison." ^ 
Among these was John Nielson, the Laird of Cor- 
sack, who saved Turner's life at Dumfries; in return 
for which service. Sir James attempted, though 
without success, to get the poor man reprieved. 
One of the condemned died of his wounds between 
the day of condemnation and the day of execution. 
''None of them," says Kirkton, "would save their 
life by taking the declaration and renouncing the 
Covenant, though it was offered to them. . . . But 
never men died in Scotland so much lamented by 
the people, not only spectators, but those in the 
country. When Knockbreck and his brother were 
turned over, they clasped each other in their armes, 
and so endured the pangs of death. When Hum- 
phray Colquhoun died, he spoke not like ane ordinary 
citizen, but like a heavenly minister, relating his 
comfortable Christian experiences, and called for 
his Bible, and laid it on his wounded arm, and read 
John iii. 8, and spoke upon it to the admiration of 

1 Kirkton, p. 248. 



112 THE PENTLAND RISING 

all. But most of all, when Mr. M'Kail died, there 
was such a lamentation as was never known in Scot- 
land before; not one dry cheek upon all the street, 
or in all the numberless windows in the mercate 
place." ^ 

The following passage from this speech speaks for 
itself and its author: — 

"Hereafter I will not talk with flesh and blood, nor think on 
the world's consolations. Farewell to all my friends, whose 
company hath been refreshful to me in my pilgrimage. I have 
done with the light of the sun and the moon; welcome eternal 
light, eternal life, everlasting love, everlasting praise, everlasting 
glory. Praise to Him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb 
for ever! Bless the Lord, O my soul, that hath pardoned all 
my iniquities in the blood of His Son, and healed all my 
diseases. Bless him, oh! all ye His angels, that excel in 
strength, ye ministers that do His pleasure. Bless the Lord, O 
my soul!" 2 

After having ascended the gallows-ladder he again 
broke forth in the following words of touching elo- 
quence: 

"And now I leave off to speak any more to creatures, and 
begin my intercourse with God, which shall never be broken 
off. Farewell father and mother, friends and relations! Fare- 
well the world and all delights! Farewell meat and drink! 
Farewell sun, moon, and stars! Welcome God and Father! 
Welcome sweet Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant! 
Welcome blessed Spirit of grace, and God of all consolation! 
Welcome glory! Welcome eternal life! Welcome Death! "^ 

At Glasgow too, where some were executed, they 
caused the soldiers to beat the drums and blow the 

1 Kirkton, p. 249. ^jvjaphtali, Glasg. 1721, p. 205. 

2 Wodrow, p. 59. 



A RECORD OF BLOOD 113 

trumpets on their closing' ears. Hideous refinement 
of revenge ! Even the last words which drop from the 
lips of a dying man — words surely the most sincere 
and the most unbiassed which mortal mouth can 
utter — even these were looked upon as poisoned 
and as poisonous. "Drown their last accents," was 
the cry, ''lest they should lead the crowd to take 
their part, or at the least to mourn their doom!"^ 
But, after all, perhaps it was more merciful than one 
would think — unintentionally so, of course; per- 
haps the storm of harsh and fiercely jubilant noises, 
the clanging of trumpets, the rattling of drums, and 
the hootings and jeerings of an unfeeling mob, which 
were the last they heard on earth, might, when the 
mortal fight was over, when the river of death was 
passed, add tenfold sweetness to the hymning of the 
angels, tenfold peacefulness to the shores which they 
had reached. 

Not content with the cruelty of these executions, 
some even of the peasantry, though these were con- 
fined to the shire of Mid-Lothian, pursued, captured, 
plundered, and murdered the miserable fugitives 
who fell in their way. One strange story have we of 
these times of blood and persecution: Kirkton, the 
historian, and popular tradition tell us alike, of a 
flame which often would arise from the grave, in a 
moss near Carnwath, of some of those poor rebels; 
of how it crept along the ground; of how it covered 
the house of their murderer; and of how it scared 
him with its lurid glare. 

^ Kirkton, p. 246. 



114 THE PENTLAND RISING 
Hear Daniel Defoe :^ 

"If the poor people were by these insupportable violences 
made desperate, and driven to all the extremities of a v^ild 
despair, who can justly reflect on them when they read in the 
word of God 'That oppression makes a wise man mad?' And 
therefore were there no other original of the insurrection known 
by the name of the Rising of Pentland, it was nothing but what 
the intolerable oppressions of those times might have justified 
to all the world, nature having dictated to all people a right of 
defence when illegally and arbitrarily attacked in a manner 
not justifiable either by the laws of nature, the laws of God, 
or the laws of the country." 

Bear this remonstrance of Defoe's in mind, and 
though it is the fashion of the day to jeer and to 
mock, to execrate and to contemn the noble band of 
Covenanters, though the bitter laugh at their old 
world religious views, the curl of the lip at their 
merits, and the chilling silence on their bravery and 
their determination, are but too rife through all 
society; be charitable to what was evil, and honest 
to what was good about the Pentland insurgents, 
who fought for life and liberty, for country and re- 
ligion, on the 28th of November 1666, now just two 
hundred years ago. 

Edinburgh, 28lh Nov. 1866. 

^ Defoe's Hist, of the Church. 



COLLEGE PAPERS 



Originally printed: 

I. Edinburgh University Magazine, January, 1871. 
II. Ibid., February, 1871. 

III. Ibid., March, 1871 

IV. Ibid., February, 1871. 
V. Ibid., April, 1871. 

For the history of the short-lived periodical to which these papers 
were contributed, see the Author's essay "^ College Magazine' ' 
in ^'Memories and Portraits." A sixth paper contributed to the 
same publication, "An Old Scots Gardener," is omitted in this 
place, having been reprinted with corrections by the Author 
himself in "Memories and Portraits." 



116 



COLLEGE PAPERS 
I 

EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1824 

ON the 2nd of January, 1824, was issued the 
prospectus of the Lapsus Linguce; or, the 
College Taller; and on the 7th the first num- 
ber appeared. On Friday the 2nd of April "Mr. 
Taller became speechless." Its history was not all 
one success; for the editor (who applies to himself the 
words of lago, "I am nothing if I am not critical") 
overstepped the bounds of caution, and found him- 
self seriously embroiled with the powers that were. 
There appeared in No. xvi. a most bitter satire 
upon Sir John Leslie, in which he was compared 
to Falstaff, charged with puffing himself ,and very 
prettily censured for publishing only the first volume 
of a class-book, and making all purchasers pay for 
both. Sir John Leslie took up the matter angrily, 
visited Carfrae the publisher, and threatened him 
with an action, till he was forced to turn the hapless 
Lapsus out of doors. The maltreated periodical 
found shelter in the shop of Huie, Infirmary Street; 
and No. xvii. was duly issued from the new office. 
No. XVII. beheld Mr. Tatlefs humiliation, in which, 
with fulsome apology and not very credible assu- 

117 



ii8 • COLLEGE PAPERS 

ranees of respect and admiration, he disclaims the 
article in question, and advertises a new issue of No. 
XVI. with all objectionable matter omitted. This, 
with pleasing euphemism, he terms in a later ad- 
vertisement, "a new and improved edition." This 
was the only remarkable adventure of Mr. Tatlefs 
brief existence; unless we consider as such a silly 
Chaldee manuscript in imitation of Blackwood, and 
a letter of reproof from a divinity student on the 
impiety of the same dull effusion. He laments the 
near approach of his end in pathetic terms. "How 
shall we summon up sufficient courage," says he, 
"to look for the last time on our beloved little devil 
and his inestimable proof-sheet? How shall we be 
able to pass No. 14 Infirmary Street and feel that all 
its attractions are over? How shall we bid farewell 
for ever to that excellent man, with the long great- 
coat, wooden leg and wooden board, who acts as 
our representative at the gate of Alma Mater?^^ But 
alas! he had no choice: Mr. Tatler, whose career, 
he says himself, had been successful, passed peace- 
fully away, and has ever since dumbly implored 
"the bringing home of bell and burial." 

Alter et idem. A very different affair was the Lap- 
sus LingucB from the Edinburgh University Maga- 
zine. The two prospectuses alone, laid side by 
side, would indicate the march of luxury and the 
repeal of the paper duty. The penny bi-weekly 
broadside of session 1823-4 was almost wholly dedi- 
cated to Momus. Epigrams, pointless letters, amor- 
ous verses, and University grievances are the con- 
tinual burthen of the song. But Mr. Tatler was not 



EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1824 119 

without a vein of hearty humour; and his pages 
afford what is much better: to wit, a good pic- 
ture of student hfe as it then was. The students 
of those pohte days insisted on retaining their hats 
in the class-room. There was a cab-stand in front 
of the College; and " Carriage Entrance" was posted 
above the main arch, on what the writer pleases to 
call "coarse, unclassic boards." The benches of 
the "Speculative" then, as now, were red; but all 
other Societies (the "Dialectic" is the only survivor) 
met down-stairs, in some rooms of which it is point- 
edly said that "nothing else could conveniently be 
made of them." However horrible these dungeons 
may have been, it is certain that they were paid for, 
and that far too heavily for the taste of session 
1823-4, which found enough calls upon its purse for 
porter and toasted cheese at Ambrose's, or cranberry 
tarts and ginger-wine at Doull's. Duelling was still 
a possibility; so much so that when two medicals 
fell to fisticuffs in Adam Square, it was seriously 
hinted that single combat would be the result. Last 
and most wonderful of all, Gall and Spurzheim were 
in every one's mouth; and the Law student, after 
having exhausted Byron's poetry and Scott's novels, 
informed the ladies of his belief in phrenology. In 
the present day he would dilate on ^^ Red as a rose is 
she,^^ and then mention that he attends Old Grey- 
friars', as a tacit claim to intellectual superiority. I 
do not know that the advance is much. 

But Mr. Tatler^s best performances were three 
short papers in which he hit off pretty smartly the 
idiosyncrasies of the " Divinity j^^ the " Medicaly^^ and 



I20 COLLEGE PAPERS 

the "Law^^ of session 1823-4. The fact that there 
was no notice of the " Arts^'' seems to suggest that 
they stood in the same intermediate position as they 
do now — the epitome of student-kind. Mr. Tatlefs 
satire is, on the whole, good-humoured, and has not 
grown superannuated in all its Hmbs. His descrip- 
tions may limp at some points, but there are certain 
broad traits that apply equally well to session 1870- 
71. He shows us the Divinity of the period — tall, 
pale, and slender — his collar greasy, and his coat 
bare about the seams — " his white neckcloth ser- 
ving four days, and regularly turned the third," — 
"the rim of his hat deficient in wool," — and "a 
weighty volume of theology under his arm." He was 
the man to buy cheap "a. snuff-box, or a dozen of 
pencils, or a six-bladed knife, or a quarter of a hun- 
dred quills," at any of the public sale-rooms. He 
was noted for cheap purchases, and for exceeding 
the legal tender in halfpence. He haunted "the 
darkest and remotest corner of the Theatre Gallery." 
He was to be seen issuing from "aerial lodging- 
houses." Withal, says mine author, "there were 
many good points about him: he paid his landlady's 
bill, read his Bible, went twice to church on Sunday, 
seldom swore, was not often tipsy, and bought the 
Lapsus LingucB.^^ 

The Medical, again, "wore a white greatcoat, and 
consequently talked loud" — (there is something 
very delicious in that consequently). He wore his 
hat on one side. He was active, volatile, and went 
to the top of Arthur's Seat on the Sunday forenoon. 
He was as quiet in a debating society as he was loud 



EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1824 121 

in the streets. He was reckless and imprudent: 
yesterday he insisted on your sharing a bottle of 
claret with him (and claret was claret then, before 
the cheap-and-nasty treaty), and to-morrow he asks 
you for the loan of a penny to buy the last number 
of the Lapsus. 

The student of Law^ again, was a learned man. 
"He had turned over the leaves of Justinian's 7^5/^*- 
tutes, and knew that they were written in Latin. He 
was well acquainted with the title-page of Black- 
stone's Commentaries, and argal (as the gravedigger 
in Hamlet says) he was not a person to be laughed 
at." He attended the Parliament House in the 
character of a critic, and could give you stale sneers 
at all the celebrated speakers. He was the terror of 
essayists at the Speculative or the Forensic. In 
social qualities he seems to have stood unrivalled. 
Even in the police-ofHce we find him shining with 
undiminished lustre. " If a Charlie should find him 
rather noisy at an untimely hour, and venture to 
take hira into custody, he appears next morning like 
a Daniel come to judgment. He opens his mouth 
to speak, and the divine precepts of unchanging 
justice and Scots Law flow from his tongue. The 
magistrate listens in amazement, and fines him only 
a couple of guineas." 

Such then were our predecessors and their College 
Magazine. Barclay, Ambrose, Young Amos, and 
Fergusson were to them what the Cafe, the Rainbow, 
and Rutherford's are to us. An hour's reading in 
these old pages absolutely confuses us, there is so 
much that is similar and so much that is different; 



122 COLLEGE PAPERS 

the follies and amusements are so like our own, and 
the manner of frolicking and'enjoying are so changed, 
that one pauses and looks about him in philosophic 
judgment. The muddy quadrangle is thick with 
living students; but in our eyes it swarms also with 
the phantasmal white greatcoats and tilted hats of 
1824. Two races meet: races alike and diverse. 
Two performances are played before our eyes; but 
the change seems merely of impersonators, of scen- 
ery, of costume. Plot and passion are the same. It 
is the fall of the spun shilling whether seventy-one 
or twenty-four has the best of it. 

In a future number we hope to give a glance at 
the individualities of the present, and see whether 
the cast shall be head or tail — whether we or the 
readers of the Lapsus stand higher in the balance. 



II 

THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY 

We have now reached the difficult portion of our 
task. Mr. Taller, for all that we care, may have 
been as virulent as he liked about the students of a 
former day; but for the iron to touch our sacred 
selves, for a brother of the Guild to betray its most 
privy infirmities, let such a Judas look to himself as 
he passes on his way to the Scots Law or the Diag- 
nostic, below the solitary lamp at the corner of the 
dark quadrangle. We confess that this idea alarms 
us. We enter a protest. We bind ourselves over 



THE MODERN STUDENT 123 

verbally to keep the peace. We hope, moreover, 
that having thus made you secret to our misgivings, 
you will excuse us if we be dull, and set that down 
to caution which you might before have charged to 
the account of stupidity. 

The natural tendency of civilisation is to obliterate 
those distinctions which are the best salt of life. All 
the fine old professional flavour in language has 
evaporated. Your very gravedigger has forgotten 
his avocation in his electorship, and would quibble 
on the Franchise over Ophelia's grave, instead of 
more appropriately discussing the duration of bod- 
ies under ground. From this tendency, from this 
gradual attrition of life, in which everything pointed 
and characteristic is being rubbed down, till the 
whole world begins to slip between our fingers in 
smooth undistinguishable sands, from this, we say, 
it follows that we must not attempt to join Mr. Tatler 
in his simple division of students into Law, Divinity, 
and Medical. Nowadays the faculties may shake 
hands over their follies; and, like Mrs. Frail and 
Mrs. Foresight (in Love for Love), they may stand 
in the doors of opposite class-rooms, crying: "Sister, 
Sister — Sister everyway!" A few restrictions, in- 
deed, remain to influence the followers of individual 
branches of study. The Divinity, for example, 
must be an avowed believer; and as this, in the 
present day, is unhappily considered by many as a 
confession of weakness, he is fain to choose one of 
two ways of gilding the distasteful orthodox bolus. 
Some swallow it in a thin jelly of metaphysics; for 
it is even a credit to believe in God on the evidence 



124 COLLEGE PAPERS 

of some crack-jaw philosopher, although it is a de- 
cided slur to believe in Him on His own authority. 
Others again (and this we think the worst method), 
finding German grammar a somewhat dry morsel, 
run their own little heresy as a proof of independence; 
and deny one of the cardinal doctrines that they may 
hold the others without being laughed at. 

Besides, however, such influences as these, there 
is little more distinction between the faculties than 
traditionary ideal, handed down through a long se- 
quence of students, and getting rounder and more 
featureless at each successive session. The plague 
of uniformity has descended on the College. Stu- 
dents (and indeed all sorts and conditions of men) 
now require their faculty and character hung round 
their neck on a placard, like the scenes in Sh'ake- 
speare's theatre. And in the midst of all this weary 
sameness, not the least common feature is the 
gravity of every face. No more does the merry 
medical run eagerly in the clear winter morning up 
the rugged sides of Arthur's Seat, and hear the 
church bells begin and thicken and die away below 
him among the gathered smoke of the city. He will 
not break Sunday to so little purpose. He no longer 
finds pleasure in the mere output of his surplus 
energy. He husbands his strength, and lays out 
walks, and reading, and amusement with deep con- 
sideration, so that he may get as much work and 
pleasure out of his body as he can, and waste none 
of his energy on mere impulse, or such flat enjoyment 
as an excursion in the country. 

See the quadrangle in the interregnum of classes 



THE MODERN STUDENT 125 

in those two or three minutes when it is full of pas- 
sing students, and we think you will admit that, if 
we have not made it ''an habitation of dragons," we 
have at least transformed it into "a, court for owls." 
Solemnity broods heavily over the enclosure; and 
wherever you seek it, you will find a dearth of merri- 
ment, an absence of real youthful enjoyment. You 
might as well try 

"To move wild laughter in the throat of death," 

as to excite any healthy stir among the bulk of this 
staid company. 

The studious congregate about the doors of the 
different classes, debating the matter of the lecture, 
or comparing note-books. A reserved rivalry sun- 
ders them. Here are some deep in Greek particles: 
there, others are already inhabitants of that land 

"Where entity and quiddity, 
Like ghosts of defunct bodies fly — 
Where Truth in person does appear 
Like words congealed in northern air." 

But none of them seem to find any relish for their 
studies — no pedantic love of this subject or that 
lights up their eyes — science and learning are only 
means for a livelihood, which they have considerately 
embraced and which they solemnly pursue. "La- 
bour's pale priests," their lips seem incapable of 
laughter, except in the way of polite recognition of 
professorial wit. The stains of ink are chronic on 
their meagre fingers. They walk like Saul among 
the asses. 



126 COLLEGE PAPERS 

The dandies are not less subdued. In 1824 there 
was a noisy dapper dandyism abroad. Vulgar, as 
we should now think, but yet genial — a matter of 
white greatcoats and loud voices — strangely differ- 
ent from the stately frippery that is rife at present. 
These men are out of their element in the quad- 
rangle. Even the small remains of boisterous hu- 
mour, which still cling to any collection of young 
men, jar painfully on their morbid sensibilities; and 
they beat a hasty retreat to resume their perfunctory 
march along Princes Street. Flirtation is to them 
a great social duty, a painful obligation, which they 
perform on every occasion in the same chill official 
manner, and with the same commonplace advances, 
the same dogged observance of traditional beha- 
viour. The shape of their raiment is a burden 
almost greater than they can bear, and they halt in 
their walk to preserve the due adjustment of their 
trouser-knees, till one would fancy he had mixed in 
a procession of Jacobs. We speak, of course, for 
ourselves; but we would as soon associate with a 
herd of sprightly apes as with these gloomy modern 
beaux. Alas, that our Mirabels, our Valentines, 
even our Brummels, should have left their mantles 
upon nothing more amusing! 

Nor are the fast men less constrained. Solemnity, 
even in dissipation, is the order of the day; and they 
go to the devil with a perverse seriousness, a syste- 
matic rationalism of wickedness that would have 
surprised the simpler sinners of old. Some of these 
men whom we see gravely conversing on the steps 
have but a slender acquaintance with each other. 



THE MODERN STUDENT 127 

Their intercourse consists principally of mutual 
bulletins of depravity; and, week after week, as they 
meet they reckon up their items of transgression, 
and give an abstract of their downward progress for 
approval and encouragement. These folk form a 
freemasonry of their own. An oath is the shibboleth 
of their sinister fellowship. Once they hear a man 
swear, it is wonderful how their tongues loosen and 
their bashful spirits take enlargement, under the 
consciousness of brotherhood. There is no folly, no 
pardoning warmth of temper about them; they are 
as steady-going and systematic in their own way as 
the studious in theirs. 

Not that we are without merry men. No. We 
shall not be ungrateful to those whose grimaces, 
whose ironical laughter, whose active feet in the 
College Anthem have beguiled so many weary hours 
and added a pleasant variety to the strain of close 
attention. But even these are too evidently pro- 
fessional in their antics. They go about cogitating 
puns and inventing tricks. It is their vocation, Hal. 
They are the gratuitous jesters of the class-room 
and, like the clown when he leaves the stage, their 
merriment too often sinks as the bell rings the hour 
of liberty, and they pass forth by the Post-Ofi&ce, 
grave and sedate, and meditating fresh gambols for 
the morrow. 

This is the impression left on the mind of any 
observing student by too many of his fellows. They 
seem all frigid old men; and one pauses to think how 
such an unnatural state of matters is produced. We 
feel inclined to blame for it the unfortunate absence 



128 COLLEGE PAPERS 

of University feeling which is so marked a charac- 
teristic of our Edinburgh students. Academical in- 
terests are so few and far between — students, as 
students, have so little in common, except a peevish 
rivalry — there is such an entire want of broad col- 
lege sympathies and ordinary college friendships, 
that we fancy that no University in the kingdom is 
in so poor a plight. Our system is full of anomalies. 
A, who cut B whilst he was a shabby student, curries 
sedulously up to him and cudgels his memory for 
anecdotes about him when he becomes the great so- 
and-so. Let there be an end of this shy, proud re- 
serve on the one hand, and this shuddering fine- 
ladyism on the other; and we think we shall find 
both ourselves and the College bettered. Let it be 
a sufficient reason for intercourse that two men sit 
together on the same benches. Let the great A be 
held excused for nodding to the shabby B in Princes 
Street, if he can say, "That fellow is a student." 
Once this could be brought about, we think you 
would find the whole heart of the University beat 
faster. We think you would find a fusion among the 
students, a growth of common feelings, an increasing 
sympathy between class and class, whose influence 
(in such a heterogeneous company as ours) might be 
of incalculable value in all branches of politics and 
social progress. It would do more than this. If we 
could find some method of making the University 
a real mother to her sons — something beyond a 
building full of class-rooms, a Senatus and a lottery 
of somewhat shabby prizes — we should strike a 
death-blow at the constrained and unnatural atti- 



THE MODERN STUDENT 129 

tude of our Society. At present we are not a united 
body, but a loose gathering of individuals, whose in- 
herent attraction is allowed to condense them into 
little knots and coteries. Our last snowball riot 
read us a plain lesson on our condition. There 
was no party spirit — no unity of interests. A few, 
who were mischievously inclined, marched off to 
the College of Surgeons in a pretentious file; but 
even before they reached their destination the feeble 
inspiration had died out in many, and their numbers 
were sadly thinned. Some followed strange gods 
in the direction of Drummond Street, and others 
slunk back to meek good-boyism at the feet of the 
Professors. The same is visible in better things. 
As you send a man to an English University that he 
may have his prejudices rubbed off, you might send 
him to Edinburgh that he may have them ingrained 
— rendered indelible — fostered by sympathy into 
living principles of his spirit. And the reason of it 
is quite plain. From this absence of University 
feeling it corses that a man's friendships are always 
the direct and immediate results of these very preju- 
dices. A common weakness is the best master of 
ceremonies in our quadrangle: a mutual vice is the 
readiest introduction. The studious associate with 
the studious alone — the dandies with the dandies. 
There -is nothing to force them to rub shoulders 
with the others; and so they grow day by day more 
wedded to their own original opinions and affections. 
They see through the same spectacle continually. 
All broad sentiments, all real catholic humanity ex- 
pires; and the mind gets gradually stiffened into one 



130 COLLEGE PAPERS 

position — becomes so habituated to a contracted 
atmosphere, that it shudders and withers under the 
least draught of the free air that circulates in the 
general field of mankind. 

Specialism in Society, then, is, we think, one cause 
of our present state. Specialism in study is another. 
We doubt whether this has ever been a good thing 
since the world began; but we are sure it is much 
worse now than it was. Formerly, when a man 
became a specialist, it was out of affection for his 
subject. With a somewhat grand devotion he left 
all the world of Science to follow his true love; and 
he contrived to find that strange pedantic interest 
which inspired the man who 

"Settled Hoti's business — let it be — 
Properly based Oun — 
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De^ 
Dead from the waist down." 

Nowadays it is quite different. Our pedantry 
wants even the saving clause of Enthusiasm. The 
election is now matter of necessity and not of choice. 
Knowledge is now too broad a field for your Jack-of- 
all-Trades; and, from beautifully utilitarian reasons, 
he makes his choice, draws his pen through a dozen 
branches of study, and behold — John the Specialist. 
That this is the way to be wealthy we shall not deny; 
but we hold that it is not the way to be healthy or 
wise. The whole mind becomes narrowed and cir- 
cumscribed to one "punctual spot" of knowledge. 
A rank unhealthy soil breeds a harvest of prejudices. 
Feeling himself above others in his one Httle branch 



THE MODERN STUDENT 131 

— in the classification of toadstools, or Carthaginian 
history — he waxes great in his own eyes and looks 
down on others. Having all his sympathies edu- 
cated in one way, they die out in every other; and 
he is apt to remain a peevish, narrow, and intolerant 
bigot. Dilettante is now a term of reproach; but 
there is a certain form of dilettantism to which no 
one can object. It is this that we want among our 
students. We wish them to abandon no subject 
until they have seen and felt its merit — to act under 
a general interest in all branches of knowledge, not 
a commercial eagerness to excel in one. 

In both these directions our sympathies are con- 
stipated. We are apostles of our own caste and our 
own subject of study, instead of being, as we should, 
true men and loving students. Of course both of 
these could be corrected by the students them- 
selves; but this is nothing to the purpose: it is more 
important to ask whether the Senatus or the body 
of alumni could do nothing towards the growth of 
better feeling and wider sentiments. Perhaps in an- 
other paper we may say something upon this head. 

One other word, however, before we have done. 
What shall we be when we grow really old? Of 
yore, a man was thought to lay on restrictions and 
acquire new deadweight of mournful experience with 
every year, till he looked back on his youth as the 
very summer of impulse and freedom. We please 
ourselves with thinking that it cannot be so with us. 
We would fain hope that, as we have begun in one 
way, we may end in another; and that when ^nq are 
in fact the octogenarians that we seem at present, 



132 COLLEGE PAPERS 

there shall be no merrier men on earth. It is 
pleasant to picture us, sunning ourselves in Princes 
Street of a morning, or chirping over our evening 
cups, with all the merriment that we wanted in 
youth. 

Ill 

DEBATING SOCIETIES 

A DEBATING society is at first somewhat of a dis- 
appointment. You do not often find the youthful 
Demosthenes chewing his pebbles in the same room 
with you; or, even if you do, you will probably think 
the performance little to be admired. As a general 
rule, the members speak shamefully ill. The sub- 
jects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The 
Ballot Question — oldest of dialectic nightmares — 
is often found astride of a somnolent sederunt. The 
Greeks and Romans, too, are reserved as sort of 
general-utility men, to do all the dirty work of illus- 
tration; and they fill as many functions as the 
famous waterfall scene at the Princesses, which I 
found doing duty on one evening as a gorge in Peru, 
a haunt of German robbers, and a peaceful vale in 
the Scottish borders. There is a sad absence of 
striking argument or real lively discussion. Indeed, 
you feel a growing contempt for your fellow-members; 
and it is not until you rise yourself to hawk and hesi- 
ate and sit shamefully down again amid eleemos- 
ynary applause, that you begin to find your level 
and value others rightly. Even then, even when 
failure has damped your critical ardour, you will see 



DEBATING SOCIETIES 133 

many things to be laughed at in the deportment of 
your rivals. 

Most laughable, perhaps, are your indefatigable 
strivers after eloquence. They are of those who 
''pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope," and 
who, since they expect that "the deficiencies of last 
sentence will be supplied by the next," have been 
recommended by Dr. Samuel Johnson to "attend 
to the History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." 
They are characterised by a hectic hopefulness. 
Nothing damps them. They rise from the ruins 
of one abortive sentence, to launch forth into another 
with unabated vigour. They have all the manner 
of an orator. From the tone of their voice, you 
would expect a splendid period — and lo! a string 
of broken-backed, disjointed clauses, eked out with 
stammerings and throat-clearings. They possess the 
art (learned from the pulpit) of rounding an un- 
euphonious sentence by dwelling on a single syllable 
— of striking a balance in a top-heavy period by 
lengthening "out a word into a melancholy quaver. 
Withal, they never cease to hope. Even at last, even 
when they have exhausted all their ideas, even after 
the would-be peroration has finally refused to pero- 
rate, they remain upon their feet with their mouths 
open, waiting for some further inspiration, like 
Chaucer's widow's son in the dung-hole, after 

"His throat was kit unto the nekke bone," 

in vain expectation of that seed that was to be laid 
upon his tongue, and give him renewed and clearer 
utterance. 



134 COLLEGE PAPERS 

These men may have something to say, if they 
could only say it — indeed they generally have; but 
the next class are people who, having nothing to say, 
are cursed with a facility and an unhappy command 
of words, that makes them the prime nuisances of the 
society they affect. They try to cover their absence 
of matter by an unwholesome vitality of dehvery. 
They look triumphantly round the room, as if court- 
ing applause, after a torrent of diluted truism. 
They talk in a circle, harping on* the same dull 
round of argument, and returning again and again 
to the same remark with the same sprighthness, the 
same irritating appearance of novelty. 

After this set, any one is tolerable; so we shall 
merely hint at a few other varieties. There is your 
man who is pre-eminently conscientious, whose face 
beams with sincerity as he opens on the negative, 
and who votes on the affirmative at the end, look- 
ing round the room with an air of chastened pride. 
There is also the irrelevant speaker, who rises, emits 
a joke or two, and then sits down again, without ever 
attempting to tackle the subject of debate. Again, 
we have men who ride pick-a-pack on their family 
reputation, or, if their family have none, identify 
themselves with some well-known statesman, use 
his opinions, and lend him their patronage on all 
occasions. This is a dangerous plan, and serves 
oftener, I am afraid, to point a difference than to 
adorn a speech. 

But alas! a striking failure may be reach-ed with- 
out tempting Providence by any of these ambitious 
tricks. Our own stature will be found high enough 



DEBATING SOCIETIES 135 

for shame. The success of three simple sentences 
lures us into a fatal parenthesis in the fourth, from 
whose shut brackets we may never disentangle the 
thread of our discourse. A momentary flush tempts 
us into a quotation; and we may be left helpless in 
the middle of one of Pope's couplets, a white film 
gathering before our eyes, and our kind friends 
charitably trying to cover our disgrace by a feeble 
round of applause. Amis lecteurs, this is a painful 
topic. It is possible that we too, we, the "potent, 
grave, and reverend" editor, may have suffered 
these things, and drunk as deep as any of the cup 
of shameful failure. Let us dwell no longer on so 
delicate a subject. 

In spite, however, of these disagreeables, I should 
recommend any student to suffer them with Spartan 
courage, as the benefits he receives should repay him 
an hundredfold for them all. The life of the deba- 
ting society is a handy antidote to the life of the 
class-room and quadrangle. Nothing could be con- 
ceived more excellent as a weapon against many of 
those peccant humours that we have been railing 
against in the Jeremiad of our last College Paper — 
particularly in the field of intellect. It is a sad sight 
to see our heather-scented students, our boys of 
seventeen, coming up to College with determined 
views — roues in speculation — having gauged the 
vanity of philosophy or learned to shun it as the 
middleman of heresy — a company of determined, 
deliberate opinionists, not to be moved by all the 
sleights of logic. What have such men to do with 
study? If their minds are made up irrevocably, 



136 COLLEGE PAPERS 

why burn the ''studious lamp" in search of further 
confirmation? Every set opinion I hear a student 
deHver I feel a certain lowering of my regard. He 
who studies, he who is yet employed in groping for 
his premises, should keep his mind fluent and sen- 
sitive, keen to mark flaws, and willing to surrender 
untenable positions. He should keep himself teach- 
able, or cease the expensive farce of being taught. 
It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to 
press the claims of debating societies. It is as a 
means of melting down this museum of premature 
petrifactions into living and impressionable soul 
that we insist on their utility. If we could once pre- 
vail on our students to feel no shame in avowing an 
uncertain attitude towards any subject, if we could 
teach them that it was unnecessary for every lad to 
have his opinionette on every topic, we should have 
gone a far way towards bracing the intellectual tone 
of the coming race of thinkers; and this it is which 
debating societies are so well fitted to perform. 

We there meet people of every shade of opinion, 
and make friends with them. We are taught to rail 
against a man the whole session through, and then 
hob-a-nob with him at the concluding entertainment. 
We find men of talent far exceeding our own, whose 
conclusions are widely different from ours; and we 
are thus taught to distrust ourselves. But the best 
means of all towards catholicity is that wholesome 
rule which some folk are most inclined to condemn, 
— I mean the law of obliged speeches. Your senior 
member commands; and you must take the affirma- 
tive or the negative, just as suits his best convenience. 



DEBATING SOCIETIES 137 

This tends to the most perfect Hberahty. It is no 
good hearing the arguments of an opponent, for in 
good verity you rarely follow them; and even if you 
do take the trouble to listen, it is merely in a captious 
search for weaknesses. This is proved, I fear, in 
every debate; when you hear each speaker arguing 
out his own prepared specialite (he never intended 
speaking, of course, until some remarks of, etc.), 
arguing out, I say, his own coached-tip subject with- 
out the least attention to what has gone before, as 
utterly at sea about the drift of his adversary's speech 
as Panurge when he argued with Thaumaste, and 
merely linking his own prelection to the last by a 
few flippant criticisms. Now, as the rule stands, 
you are saddled with the side you disapprove, and 
so you are forced, by regard for your own fame, to 
argue out, to feel with, to elaborate completely, the 
case as it stands against yourself; and what a fund 
of wisdom do you not turn up in this idle digging of 
the vineyard! How many new difficulties take form 
before yoilr eyes! how many superannuated argu- 
ments cripple finally into limbo, under the glance of 
your enforced eclecticism! 

Nor is this the only merit of Debating Societies. 
They tend also to foster taste, and to promote friend- 
ship between University men. This last, as we have 
had occasion before to say, is the great requirement 
of our student life; and it will therefore be no waste 
of time if we devote a paragraph to this subject in 
its connection with Debating Societies. At present 
they partake too much of the nature of a clique. 
Friends propose friends, and mutual friends second 



138 COLLEGE PAPERS 

them, until the society degenerates into a sort of 
family party. You may confirm old acquaintances, 
but you can rarely make new ones. You find your- 
self in the atmosphere of your own daily intercourse. 
Now, this is an unfortunate circumstance, which it 
seems to me might readily be rectified. Our Prin- 
cipal has shown himself so friendly towards all Col- 
lege improvements that I cherish the hope of seeing 
shortly realised a certain suggestion, which is not a 
new one with me, and which must often have been 
proposed and canvassed heretofore — I mean a 
real University Debating Society, patronised by the 
Senatus, presided over by the Professors, to which 
every one might gain ready admittance on sight of 
his matriculation ticket, where it would be a favour 
and not a necessity to speak, and where the obscure 
student might have another object for attendance 
besides the mere desire to save his fines; to wit, the 
chance of drawing on himself the favourable con- 
sideration of his teachers. This would be merely 
following in the good tendency, which has been so 
noticeable during all this session, to increase and 
multiply student societies and clubs of every sort. 
Nor would it be a matter of much difficulty. The 
united societies would form a nucleus: one of the 
class-rooms at first, and perhaps afterwards the great 
hall above the library, might be the place of meet- 
ing. There would be no want of attendance or 
enthusiasm, I am sure; for it is a very different 
thing to speak under the bushel of a private club on 
the one hand, and, on the other, in a public place, 
where a happy period or a subtle argument may do 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS 139 

the speaker permanent service in after life. Such 
a club might end, perhaps, by rivalling the ''Union" 
at Cambridge or the "Union" at Oxford. 



IV 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS » 

It is wonderful to think what a turn has been given 
to our whole Society by the fact that we live under 
the sign of Aquarius, — that our climate is essentially 
wet. A mere arbitrary distinction, like the walking- 
swords of yore, might have remained the symbol of 
foresight and respectability, had not the raw mists 
and dropping showers of our island pointed the in- 
clination of Society to another exponent of those 
virtues. A ribbon of the Legion of Honour or a 
string of medals may prove a person's courage; a 
title may prove his birth; a professorial chair his 
study and acquirement; but it is the habitual car- 
riage of the umbrella that is the stamp of respecta- 
bility. The umbrella has become the acknowledged 
index of social position. 

Robinson Crusoe presents us with a touching in- 
stance of the hankering after them inherent in the 
civihsed and educated mind. To the superficial, 
the hot suns of Juan Fernandez may sufficiently 
account for his quaint choice of a luxury; but surely 

' "This paper was written in collaboration with James Walter 
Ferrier, and if reprinted this is to be stated, though his principal 
collaboration was to lie back in an easy-chair and laugh." — [R. L. 
S, Oct. 25, 1894.] 



I40 COLLEGE PAPERS 

one who had borne the hard labour of a seaman 
under the tropics for all these years could have sup- 
ported an excursion after goats or a peaceful con- 
stitutional arm in arm with the nude Friday. No, 
it was not this: the memory of a vanished respecta- 
bility called for some outward manifestation, and 
the result was — an umbrella. A pious castaway 
might have rigged up a belfry and solaced his 
Sunday mornings with the mimicry of church bells; 
but Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and 
his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civil- 
ised mind striving to express itself under adverse 
circumstances as we have ever met with. 

It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has 
become the very foremost badge of modern civilisa- 
tion — the Urim and Thummim of respectabihty. 
Its pregnant symbolism has taken its rise in the 
most natural manner. Consider, for a moment, 
when umbrellas were first introduced into this coun- 
try, what manner of men would use them, and what 
class would adhere to the useless but ornamental 
cane. The first, without doubt, would be the 
hypochondriacal, out of solicitude for their health, 
or the frugal, out of care for their raiment; the 
second, it is equally plain, would include the fop, 
the fool, and the Bobadil. Any one acquainted 
with the growth of Society, and knowing out of what 
small seeds of cause are produced great revolutions 
and wholly new conditions of intercourse, sees from 
this simple thought how the carriage of an umbrella 
came to indicate frugality, judicious regard for bod- 
ily welfare, and scorn for mere outward adorn- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS 141 

ment, and, in one word, all those homely and solid 
virtues implied in the term respectability. Not 
that the umbrella's costliness has nothing to do with 
its great influence. Its possession, besides symbol- 
ising (as we have already indicated) the change from 
wild Esau to plain Jacob dwelling in tents, implies 
a certain comfortable provision of fortune. It is 
not every one that can expose twenty-six shillings' 
worth of property to so many chances of loss and 
theft. So strongly do we feel on this point, indeed, 
that we are almost inclined to consider all who pos- 
sess really well-conditioned umbrellas as worthy of 
the Franchise. They have a qualification standing 
in their lobbies; they carry a sufficient stake in the 
common-weal below their arm. One who bears with 
him an umbrella — such a complicated structure 
of whalebone, of silk, and of cane, that it becomes 
a very microcosm of modern industry — is neces- 
sarily a man of peace. A half-crown cane may be 
applied to an offender's head on a very moderate 
provocation; but a six-and- twenty shilling silk is a 
possession too precious to be adventured in the 
shock of war. 

These are but a few glances at how umbrellas 
(in the general) came to their present high estate. 
But the true Umbrella-Philosopher meets with far 
stranger applications as he goes about the streets. 

Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy 
with the individual who carries them: indeed, they 
are far more capable of betraying his trust; for 
whereas a face is given to us so far ready-made, and 
all our power over it is in frowning, and laughing. 



142 COLLEGE PAPERS 

and grimacing, during the first three or four decades 
of life, each umbrella is selected from a whole shop- 
ful, as being most consonant to the purchaser's dis- 
position. An undoubted power of diagnosis rests 
with the practised Umbrella-Philosopher. O you 
who lisp, and amble, and change the fashion of 
your countenances — you who conceal all these, 
how little do you think that you left a proof of your 
weakness in our umbrella-stand — that even now, 
as you shake out the folds to meet the thickening 
snow, we read in its ivory handle the outward and 
visible sign of your snobbery, or from the exposed 
gingham of its cover detect, through coat and waist- 
coat, the hidden hypocrisy of the dickey! But alas! 
even the umbrella is no certain criterion. The 
falsity and the folly of the human race have degraded 
that graceful symbol to the ends of dishonesty; and 
while some umbrellas, from carelessness in selection, 
are not strikingly characteristic (for it is only in 
what a man loves that he displays his real nature), 
others, from certain prudential motives, are chosen 
directly opposite to the person's disposition. A men- 
dacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degrada- 
tion. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a 
silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious 
friends armed with the decent and reputable ging- 
ham. May it not be said of the bearers of these 
inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the 
streets "with a he in their right hand"? 

The king of Siam, as we read, besides having a 
graduated social scale of umbrellas (which was a 
good thing), prevented the great bulk of his sub- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS 143 

jects from having any at all, which was certainly a 
bad thing. We should be sorry to believe that this 
Eastern legislator was a fool — the idea of an aris- 
tocracy of umbrellas is too philosophic to have 
originated in a nobody, — and we have accordingly 
taken exceeding pains to find out the reason of this 
harsh restriction. We think we have succeeded; 
but, while admiring the principle at which he aimed, 
and while cordially recognising in the Siamese po- 
tentate the only man before ourselves who had ta- 
ken a real grasp of the umbrella, we must be al- 
lowed to point out how unphilosophically the great 
man acted in this particular. His object, plainly, 
was to prevent any unworthy persons from bearing 
the sacred symbol of domestic virtues. We cannot 
excuse his limiting these virtues to the circle of his 
court. We must only remember that such was the 
feeling of the age in which he lived. Liberalism had 
not yet raised the war-cry of the working classes. 
But here was his mistake: it was a needless regu- 
lation. Except in a very few cases of hypocrisy 
joined to a powerful intellect, men, not by nature 
umbrellarians, have tried again and again to become 
so by art, and yet have failed — have expended 
their patrimony in the purchase of umbrella after 
umbrella, and yet. have systematically lost them, and 
have finally, with contrite spirits, and shrunken 
purses, given up their vain struggle, and relied on 
theft and borrowing for the remainder of their lives. 
This is the most remarkable fact that we have had 
occasion to notice; and yet we challenge the candid 
reader to call it in question. Now, as there cannot 



144 COLLEGE PAPERS 

be any moral selection in a mere dead piece of furni- 
ture — as the umbrella cannot be supposed to have 
an affinity for individual men equal and reciprocal 
to that which men certainly feel towards individual 
umbrellas, — we took the trouble of consulting a 
scientific friend as to whether there was any possible 
physical explanation of the phenomenon. He was 
unable to supply a plausible theory, or even hypoth- 
esis; but we extract from his letter the following 
interesting passage relative to the physical peculiar- 
ities of umbrellas: "Not the least important, and by 
far the most curious property of the umbrella, is 
the energy which it displays in affecting the atmos- 
pheric strata. There is no fact in meteorology 
better established — indeed, it is almost the only one 
on which meteorologists are agreed — than that the 
carriage of an umbrella produces desiccation of the 
air; while if it be left at home, aqueous vapour is 
largely produced, and is soon deposited in the form 
of rain. No theory," my friend continues, "com- 
petent to explain this hygrometric law has yet been 
given (as far as I am aware) by Herschel, Dove, 
Glaisher, Tait, Buchan, or any other writer; nor do 
I pretend to supply the defect. I venture, however, 
to throw out the conjecture that it will be ultimately 
found to belong to the same class of natural laws as 
that agreeable to which a slice of toast always de- 
scends with the buttered surface downwards." 

But it is time to draw to a close. We could ex- 
patiate much longer upon this topic, but want of 
space constrains us to leave unfinished these few 
desultory remarks — slender contributions towards 



PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE 145 

a subject which has fallen sadly backwards, and 
which, we grieve to say, was better understood by the 
king of Siam in 1686 than by all the philosophers 
of to-day. If, however, we have awakened in any 
rational mind an interest in the symbolism of um- 
brellas — in any generous heart a more complete 
sympathy with the dumb companion of his daily 
walk, — or in any grasping spirit a pure notion of 
respectability strong enough to make him expend 
his six-and-twenty shillings — we shall have de- 
served well of the world, to say nothing of the many 
industrious persons employed in the manufacture of 
the article. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE 

"How many Caesars and Pompeys, by mere inspirations of the 
names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many are 
there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not 
their characters and spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd 
into nothing?" — Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap. xix. 



Such were the views of the late Walter Shandy, 
Esq., Turkey merchant. To the best of my belief, 
Mr. Shandy is the first who fairly pointed out the 
incalculable influence of nomenclature upon the 
whole life — who seems first to have recognised the 
one child, happy in an heroic appellation, soaring 
upwards on the wings of fortune, and the other, like 
the dead sailor in his shotted hammock, haled down 
by sheer weight of name into the abysses of social 



146 COLLEGE PAPERS 

failure. Solomon possibly had his eye on some such 
theory when he said that "a good name is better 
than precious ointment"; and perhaps we may 
trace a similar spirit in the compilers of the English 
Catechism, and the affectionate interest with which 
they linger round the catechumen's name at the 
very threshold of their work. But, be these as they 
may, I think no one can censure me for appending, 
in pursuance of the expressed wish of his son, the 
Turkey merchant's name to his system, and pro- 
nouncing, without further preface, a short epitome 
of the Shandean Philosophy of Nomenclature. 

To begin, then: the influence of our name makes 
itself felt from the very cradle. As a schoolboy I 
remember the pride with which I hailed Robin 
Hood, Robert Bruce, and Robert le Diable as my 
name-fellows; and the feeling of sore disappoint- 
ment that fell on my heart when I found a freebooter 
or a general who did not share with me a single one 
of my numerous percenomina. Look at the delight 
with which two children find they have the same 
name. They are friends from that moment forth; 
they have a bond of union stronger than exchange 
of nuts and sweetmeats. This feeling, I own, wears 
off in later life. Our names lose their freshness 
and interest, become trite and indifferent. But this, 
dear reader, is merely one of the sad effects of those 
"shades of the prison-house" which come gradu- 
ally betwixt us and nature with advancing years; it 
affords no weapon against the philosophy of names. 

In after life, although we fail to trace its working, 
that name which careless godfathers lightly applied 



PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE 147 

to your unconscious infancy will have been mould- 
ing your character, and influencing with irresistible 
power the whole course of your earthly fortunes. 
But the last name, overlooked by Mr. Shandy, is no 
whit less important as a condition of success. Fam- 
ily names, we must recollect, are but inherited nick- 
names; and if the sobriquet were applicable to the 
ancestor, it is most likely apphcable to the descen- 
dant also. You would not expect to find Mr. M'Phun 
acting as a mute, or Mr. M'Lumpha excelling as a 
professor of dancing. Therefore, in what follows, 
we shall consider names, independent of whether 
they are first or last. And to begin with, look what 
a pull Cromwell had over Pym — the one name full 
of a resonant imperiaHsm, the other, mean, petti- 
fogging, and unheroic to a degree. Who would ex- 
pect eloquence from Pym — who would read poems 
by Pym — who would bow to the opinion of Pym ? 
He might have been a dentist, but he should never 
have aspired to be a statesman. I can only wonder 
that he succeeded as he did. Pym and Habakkuk 
stand first upon the roll of men who have triumphed, 
by sheer force of genius, over the most unfavourable 
appellations. But even these have suffered; and, 
had they been more fitly named, the one might have 
been Lord Protector, and the other have shared the 
laurels with Isaiah. In this matter we must not 
forget that all our great poets have borne great names. 
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Words- 
worth, Shelley — what a constellation of lordly 
words! Not a single commonplace name among 
them — not a Brown, not a Jones, not a Robinson; 



148 COLLEGE PAPERS 

they are all names that one would stop and look at 
on a door-plate. Now, imagine if Pepys had tried 
to clamber somehow into the enclosure of poetry, 
what a blot would that word have made upon the 
list! The thing was impossible. In the first place, 
a certain natural consciousness that men have would 
have held him down to the level of his name, would 
have prevented him from rising above the Pepsine 
standard, and so haply withheld him altogether 
from attempting verse. Next, the booksellers would 
refuse to pubhsh, and the world to read them, on 
the mere evidence of the fatal appellation. And 
now, before I close this section, I must say one word 
as to punnable names, names that stand alone, that 
have a significance and life apart from him that bears 
them. These are the bitterest of all. One friend 
of mine goes bowed and humbled through life under 
the weight of this misfortune; for it is an awful thing 
when a man's name is a joke, when he cannot be 
mentioned without exciting merriment, and when 
even the intimation of his death bids fair to carry 
laughter into many a home. 

So much for people who are badly named. Now 
for people who are too well named, who go top- 
heavy from the font, who are baptised into a false 
position, and find themselves beginning life ecHpsed 
under the fame of some of the great ones of the past. 
A man, for instance, called William Shakespeare, 
could never dare to write plays. He is thrown into 
too humbling an apposition with the author of 
Hamlet. His own name coming after is such an 
anticlimax. "The plays of William Shakespeare?" 



PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE 149 

says the reader — "O no! The plays of Wilham 
Shakespeare Cockerill," and he throws the book 
aside. In wise pursuance of such views, Mr. John 
Milton Hengler, who not long since delighted us in 
this favoured town, has never attempted to write an 
epic, but has chosen a new path, and has excelled 
upon the tight-rope. A marked example of triumph 
over this is the case of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
On the face of the matter, I should have advised 
him to imitate the pleasing modesty of the last-named 
gentleman, and confine his ambition to the sawdust. 
But Mr. Rossetti has triumphed. He has even dared 
to translate from his mighty name-father; and the 
voice of fame supports him in his boldness. 

Dear readers, one might write a year upon this 
matter. A lifetime of comparison and research 
could scarce suffice for its elucidation. So here, if 
it please you, we shall let it rest. Slight as these 
notes have been, I would that the great founder of 
the system had been alive to see them. How he had 
warmed and brightened, how his persuasive elo- 
quence would have fallen on the ears of Toby; and 
what a letter of praise and sympathy would not 
the editor have received before the month was out! 
Alas! the thing was not to be. Walter Shandy died 
and was duly buried, while yet his theory lay for- 
gotten and neglected by his fellow-countrymen. 
But, reader, the day will come, I hope, when a pa- 
ternal government will stamp out, as seeds of national 
weakness, all depressing patronymics, and when 
godfathers and godmothers will soberly and earnestly 
debate the interest of the nameless one, and not rush 



150 COLLEGE PAPERS 

blindfold to the christening. In these days there 
shall be written a Godfathefs Assistant, in shape of 
a dictionary of names, with their concomitant vir- 
tues and vices; and this book shall be scattered 
broadcast through the land, and shall be on the 
table of every one eligible for godfathership, until 
such a thing as a vicious or untoward appellation 
shall have ceased from off the face of the earth. 



CRITICISMS 



CRITICISMS 



LORD LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG" 

IT seems as if Lord Lytton, in this new book of 
his, had found the form most natural to his 
talent. In some ways, indeed, it may be held 
inferior to "Chronicles and Characters"; we look 
in vain for anything like the terrible intensity of the 
night-scene in "Irene," or for any such passages of 
massive and memorable writing as appeared, here 
and there, in the earlier work, and made it not 
altogether unworthy of its model, Hugo's "Legend 
of the Ages." But it becomes evident, on the most 
hasty retrospect, that this earlier work was a step 
on the way towards the later. It seems as if the 
author had been feeling about for his definite 
medium, and was already, in the language of the 
child's game, growing hot. There are many pieces 
in "Chronicles and Characters" that might be de- 
tached from their original setting, and embodied, as 
they stand, among the "Fables in Song." 

For the term Fable is not very easy to define rigor- 
ously. In the most typical form some moral pre- 
cept is set forth by means of a conception purely 
fantastic, and usually somewhat trivial into the bar- 

153 



154 CRITICISMS 

gain; there is something playful about it, that will 
not support a very exacting criticism, and the lesson 
must be apprehended by the fancy at half a hint. 
Such is the great mass of the old stories of wise 
animals or foolish men that have amused our child- 
hood. But we should expect the fable, in company 
with other and more important literary forms, to be 
more and more loosely, or at least largely, compre- 
hended as time went on, and so to degenerate in 
conception from this original type. That depended 
for much of its piquancy on the very fact that it was 
fantastic: the point of the thing lay in a sort of 
humorous inappropriateness; and it is natural 
enough that pleasantry of this description should 
become less common, as men learn to suspect some 
serious analogy underneath. Thus a comical story 
of an ape touches us quite differently after the prop- 
osition of Mr. Darwin's theory. Moreover there 
lay, perhaps, at the bottom of this primitive sort of 
fable, a humanity, a tenderness of rough truths; so 
that at the end of some story, in which vice or folly 
had met with its destined punishment, the fabulist 
might be able to assure his auditors, as we have often 
to assure tearful children on the like occasions, that 
they may dry their eyes, for none of it was true. 

But this benefit of fiction becomes lost with more 
sophisticated hearers and authors: a man is no longer 
the dupe of his own artifice, and cannot deal play- 
fully with truths that are a matter of bitter concern 
to him in his life. And hence, in the progressive 
centrahsation of modern thought, we should expect 
the old form of fable to fall gradually into desuetude, 



LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG" 155 

and be gradually succeeded by another, which is a 
fable in all points except that it is not altogether 
fabulous. And this new form, such as we should ex- 
pect, and such as we do indeed find, still presents the 
essential character of brevity; as in any other fable 
also, there is, underlying and animating the brief 
action, a moral idea; and as in any other fable, the 
object is to bring this home to the reader through 
the intellect rather than through the feelings; so 
that, without being very deeply moved or interested 
by the characters of the piece, we should recognise 
vividly the hinges on which the little plot revolves. 
But the fabulist now seeks analogies where before 
he merely sought humorous situations. There will 
be now a logical nexus between the moral expressed 
and the machinery employed to express it. The 
machinery, in fact, as this change is developed, be- 
comes less and less fabulous. We find ourselves in 
presence of quite a serious, if quite a miniature, 
division of creative literature; and sometimes we 
have the lesson embodied in a sober, every-day nar- 
ration, as in the parables of the New Testament, 
and sometimes merely the statement or, at most, 
the collocation of significant facts in life, the reader 
being left to resolve for himself the vague, trouble- 
some, and not yet definitely moral sentiment which 
has been thus created. And step by step with the 
development of this change, yet another is devel- 
oped: the moral tends to become more indetermi- 
nate and large. It ceases to be possible to append it, 
in a tag, to the bottom of the piece, as one might 
write the name below a caricature; and the fable 



156 CRITICISMS 

begins to take rank with all other forms of creative 
literature, as something too ambitious, in spite of 
its miniature dimensions, to be resumed in any suc- 
cinct formula without the loss of all that is deepest 
and most suggestive in it. 

Now it is in this widest sense that Lord Lytton 
understands the term; there are examples in his 
two pleasant volumes of all the forms already men- 
tioned, and even of another which can only be ad- 
mitted among fables by the utmost possible leniency 
of construction. '' Composure," "Et Csetera," and 
several more, are merely similes poetically elaborated. 
So, too, is the pathetic story of the grandfather and 
grandchild: the child, having treasured away an 
icicle and forgotten it for ten minutes, comes back 
to find it already nearly melted, and no longer beau- 
tiful: at the same time, the grandfather has just 
remembered and taken out a bundle of love-letters, 
which he too had stored away in years gone by, and 
then long neglected; and, behold! the letters are as 
faded and sorrowfully disappointing as the icicle. 
This is merely a simile poetically worked out; and 
yet it is in such as these, and some others, to be men- 
tioned further on, that the author seems at his best. 
Wherever he has really written after the old model, 
there is something to be deprecated: in spite of all 
the spirit and freshness, in spite of his happy assump- 
tion of that cheerful acceptation of things as they 
are, which, rightly or wrongly, we come to attribute 
to the ideal fabulist, there is ever a sense as of some- 
thing a little out of place. A form of literature so 
very innocent and primitive looks a httle overwritten 



LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG" 157 

in Lord Lytton's conscious and highly coloured 
style. It may be bad taste, but sometimes we should 
prefer a few sentences of plain prose narration, and 
a little Bewick by way of tail-piece. So that it is 
not among those fables that conform most nearly to 
the old model, but one had nearly said among those 
that most widely differ from it, that we find the most 
satisfactory examples of the author's manner. 

In the mere matter of ingenuity, the metaphysical 
fables are the most remarkable; such as that of the 
windmill who imagined that it was he who raised 
the wind; or that of the grocer's balance (" Cogito 
ergo sum") who considered himself endowed with 
free-will, reason, and an infallible practical judg- 
ment; until, one fine day, the police make a descent 
upon the shop, and hnd the weights false and the 
scales unequal; and the whole thing is broken up 
for old iron. Capital fables, also, in the same 
ironical spirit, are "Prometheus Unbound," the 
tale of the vain glorying of a champagne-cork, and 
"Teleology," where a nettle justifies the ways of 
God to nettles while all goes well with it, and, upon 
a change of luck, promptly changes its divinity. 

In all these there is still plenty of the fabulous 
if you will, although, even here, the remay be two 
opinions possible; but there is another group, of an 
order of merit perhaps still higher, where we look 
in vain for any such playful liberties with Nature. 
Thus we have "Conservation of Force"; where a 
musician, thinking of a certain picture, improvises 
in the twilight; a poet, hearing the music, goes 
home inspired, and writes a poem; and then a painter, 



158 CRITICISMS 

under the influence of this poem, paints another 
picture, thus lineally descended from the first. 
This is fiction, but not what we have been used 
to call fable. We miss the incredible element, the 
point of audacity with which the fabulist was wont 
to mock at his readers. And still more so is this the 
case with others. ''The Horse and the Fly" states 
one of the unanswerable problems of life in quite a 
realistic and straightforward way. A fly startles a 
cab-horse, the coach is overset; a newly married 
pair within and the driver, a man with a wife and 
family, are all killed. The horse continues to gallop 
off in the loose traces, and ends the tragedy by run- 
ning over an only child; and there is some little 
pathetic detail here introduced in the teUing, that 
makes the reader's indignation very white-hot 
against some one. It remains to be seen who that 
some one is to be: the fly? Nay, but, on closer in- 
spection, it appears that the fly, actuated by maternal 
instinct, was only seeking a place for her eggs: is 
maternal instinct, then, "sole author of these mis- 
chiefs aU"? "Who's in the Right?" one of the 
best fables in the book, is somewhat in the same vein. 
After a battle has been won, a group of officers as- 
semble inside a battery, and debate together who 
should have the honour of the success: the Prince, 
the general staff, the cavalry, the engineer who 
posted the battery in which they then stand talking, 
are successively named: the sergeant, who pointed 
the guns, sneers to himself at the mention of the en- 
gineer; and, close by, the gunner, who had applied 
the match, passes away with a smile of triumph, 



LYTTON'S ^TABLES IN SONG" 159 

since it was through his hand that the victorious 
blow had been dealt. Meanwhile, the cannon claims 
the honour over the gunner; the cannon-ball, who 
actually goes forth on the dread mission, claims it 
over the cannon, who remains idly behind; the 
powder reminds the cannon-ball that, but for him, 
it would still be lying on the arsenal floor; and the 
match caps the discussion: powder, cannon-ball, 
and cannon would be all equally vain and ineffectual 
without fire. Just then there comes on a shower of 
r,ain which wets the powder and puts out the match, 
and completes this lesson of dependence, by indica- 
ting the negative conditions which are as necessary 
for any effect, in their absence, as is the presence of 
this great fraternity of positive conditions, not any 
one of which can claim priority over any other. But 
the fable does not end here, as perhaps, in all logical 
strictness, it should. It wanders off into a discus- 
sion as to which is the truer greatness, that of the 
vanquished fire or that of the victorious rain. And 
the speech of the rain is charming: 

"Lo, with my little drops I bless again 
And beautify the fields which thou didst blast! 
Rend, wither, waste, and ruin, what thou wilt, 
But call not Greatness what the Gods call Guilt. 
Blossoms and grass from blood in battle spilt, 
And poppied corn, I bring. 
'Mid mouldering Babels, to oblivion built, 
My violets spring. 

Little by little my small drops have strength 
To deck with green delights the grateful earth." 

And so forth, not quite germane (it seems to me) to 
the matter in hand, but welcome for its own sake. 



i6o CRITICISMS 

Best of all are the fables that deal more imme- 
diately with the emotions. There is, for instance, 
that of ''The Two Travellers," which is profoundly 
moving in conception, although by no means as 
well written as some others. In this, one of the two, 
fearfully frost-bitten, saves his life out of the snow 
at the cost of all that was comely in his body; just 
as, long before, the other, who has now quietly re- 
signed himself to death, had violently freed himself 
from Love at the cost of all that was finest and fairest 
in his character. Very graceful and sweet is the 
fable (if so it should be called) in which the author 
sings the praises of that "kindly perspective" which 
lets a wheat-stalk near the eye cover twenty leagues 
of distant country, and makes the humble circle 
about a man's hearth more to him than all the 
possibilities of the external world. The companion 
fable to this is also excellent. It tells us of a man 
who had, all his life through, entertained a passion 
for certain blue hills on the far horizon, and had 
promised himself to travel thither ere he died, and 
become familiar with these distant friends. At last, 
in some political trouble, he is banished to the very 
place of his dreams. He arrives there overnight, 
and, when he rises and goes forth in the morning, 
there sure enough are the blue hills, only now they 
have changed places with him, and smile across to 
him, distant as ever, from the old home whence he 
has come. Such a story might have been very cyn- 
ically treated; but it is not so done, the whole tone 
is kindly and consolatory, and the disenchanted man 
submissively takes the lesson, and understands that 



LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG'' k 

things far away are to be loved for their own sake, 
and that the unattainable is not truly unattainable, 
when we can make the beauty of it our own. Indeed, 
throughout all these two volumes, though there is 
much practical scepticism, and much irony on ab- 
stract questions, this kindly and consolatory spirit 
is never absent. There is much that is cheerful 
and, after a sedate, fireside fashion, hopeful. No 
one will be discouraged by reading the book; but the 
ground of all this hopefulness and cheerfulness re- 
mains to the end somewhat vague. It does not seem 
to arise from any practical belief in the future either 
of the individual or the race, but rather from the 
profound personal contentment of the writer. This 
is, I suppose, all we must look for in the case. It is 
as much as we can expect, if the fabulist shall prove 
a shrewd and cheerful fellow-wayfarer, one with 
whom the world does not seem to have gone much 
amiss, but who has yet laughingly learned something 
of its evil. It will depend much, of course, upon our 
own character and circumstances, whether the en- 
counter will be agreeable and bracing to the spirits, 
or offend us as an ill-timed mockery. But where, 
as here, there is a little tincture of bitterness along 
with the good-nature, where it is plainly not the 
humour of a man cheerfully ignorant, but of one who 
looks on, tolerant and superior and smilingly atten- 
tive, upon the good and bad of our existence, it will 
go hardly if we do not catch some reflection of the 
same spirit to help us on our way. There is here no 
impertinent and lying proclamation of peace — none 
of the cheap optimism of the well-to-do; what we 



.1 CRITICISMS 

find here is a view of life that would be even grievous, 
were it not enlivened with this abiding cheerfulness, 
and ever and anon redeemed by a stroke of pathos. 

It is natural enough, I suppose, that we should find 
wanting in this book some of the intenser qualities 
of the author's work; and their absence is made 
up for by much happy description after a quieter 
fashion. The burst of jubilation over the departure 
of the snow, which forms the prelude to "The 
Thistle," is full of spirit and of pleasant images. 
The speech of the forest in "Sans Souci" is inspired 
by a beautiful sentiment for nature of the modern 
sort, and pleases us more, I think, as poetry should 
please us, than anything in "Chronicles and Char- 
acters." There are some admirable felicities of ex- 
pression here and there; as that of the hill, whose 
summit 

''Did print 
The azure air with pines." 

Moreover, I do not recollect in the author's 
former work any symptom of that sympathetic 
treatment of still life, which is noticeable now and 
again in the fables; and perhaps most noticeably, 
when he sketches the burned letters as they hover 
along the gusty flue, "Thin, sable veils wherein a 
restless spark Yet trembled." But the description 
is at its best when the subjects are unpleasant, or 
even grisly. There are a few capital lines in this 
key on the last spasm of the battle before alluded to. 
Surely nothing could be better, in its own way, than 
the fish in "The Last Cruise of the Arrogant," "the 



LYTTON'S -FABLES IN SONG" 163 

shadowy, side-faced, silent things," that come but- 
ting and staring with hdless eyes at the sunken 
steam-engine. And although, in yet another, we 
are told, pleasantly enough, how the water went 
down into the valleys, where it set itself gaily to saw 
wood, and on into the plains, where it would soberly 
carry grain to town; yet the real strength of the 
fable is when it deals with the shut pool in which 
certain unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among 
slugs and snails, and in the company of an old toad. 
The sodden contentment of the fallen acorn is 
strangely significant; and it is astonishing how un- 
pleasantly we are startled by the appearance of her 
horrible lover, the maggot. 

And now for a last word, about the style. This is 
not easy to criticise. It is impossible to deny to it 
rapidity, spirit, and a full sound; the lines are never 
lame, and the sense is carried forwards with an 
uninterrupted, impetuous rush. But it is not equal. 
After passages of really admirable versification, the 
author falls back upon a sort of loose, cavalry man- 
ner, not unlike the style of some of Mr. Browning's 
minor pieces, and almost inseparable from wordiness, 
and an easy acceptation of somewhat cheap finish. 
There is nothing here of that compression which is 
the note of a really sovereign style. It is unfair, 
perhaps, to set a not remarkable passage from Lord 
Lytton side by side with one of the signal master- 
pieces of another, and a very perfect poet; and yet it 
is interesting, when we see how the portraiture of a 
dog, detailed through thirty-odd lines, is frittered 
down and finally almost lost in the mere laxity of the 



i64 CRITICISMS 

style, to compare it with the clear, simple, vigorous 
dehneation that Burns, in four couplets, has given 
us of the ploughman's coUie. It is interesting, at 
first, and then it becomes a Httle irritating; for when 
we think of other passages so much more finished 
and adroit, we cannot help feeling that with a little 
more ardour after perfection of form, criticism 
would have found nothing left for her to censure. 
A similar mark of precipitate work is the number of 
adjectives tumultuously heaped together, sometimes 
to help out the sense, and sometimes (as one cannot 
but suspect) to help out the sound of the verses. I 
do not believe, for instance, that Lord Lytton him- 
self would defend the lines in which we are told how 
Laocoon '' Revealed to Roman crowds, now Christian 
grown. That Pagan anguish which, in Parian stone, 
the Rhodian artist," and so on. It is not only that 
this is bad in itself; but that it is unworthy of the 
company in which it is found; that such verses 
should not have appeared with the name of a good 
versifier like Lord Lytton. We must take excep- 
tion, also, in conclusion, to the excess of alliteration. 
Alliteration is so liable to be abused that we can 
scarcely be too sparing of it; and yet it is a trick 
that seems to grow upon the author with years. It 
is a pity to see fine verses, such as some in "Demos," 
absolutely spoiled by the recurrence of one wearisome 
consonant. 



SALVINFS MACBETH 165 



II 

SALVINI'S MACBETH 

Salvini closed his short visit to Edinburgh by a 
performance of Macbeth. It was, perhaps, from a 
sentiment of local colour that he chose to play the 
Scottish usurper for the first time before Scotsmen; 
and the audience were not insensible of the privilege. 
Few things, indeed, can move a stronger interest 
than to see a great creation taking shape for the first 
time. If it is not purely artistic, the sentiment is 
surely human. And the thought that you are before 
all the world, and have the start of so many others as 
eager as yourself, at least keeps you in a more un- 
bearable suspense before the curtain rises, if it does 
not enhance the delight with which you follow the 
performance and see the actor "bend up each cor- 
poral agent" to realise a masterpiece of a few hours' 
duration. -With a player so variable as Salvini, who 
trusts to the feeling of the moment for so much 
detail, and who, night after night, does the same 
thing differently but always well, it can never be 
safe to pass judgment after a single hearing. And 
this is more particularly true of last week's Macbeth; 
for the whole third act was marred by a grievously 
humorous misadventure. Several minutes too soon 
the ghost of Banquo joined the party, and, after 
having sat helpless awhile at a table, was ignomini- 
ously withdrawn. Twice was this ghostly Jack-in- 
the-box obtruded on the stage before his time; 



i66 CRITICISMS 

twice removed again; and yet he showed so little 
hurry when he was really wanted, that, after an 
awkward pause, Macbeth had to begin his apos- 
trophe to empty air. The arrival of the belated 
spectre in the middle, with a jerk that made him 
nod all over, was the last accident in the chapter, 
and worthily topped the whole. It may be imagined 
how lamely matters went throughout these cross- 
purposes. 

In spite of this, and some other hitches, Salvini's 
Macbeth had an emphatic success. The creation is 
worthy of a place beside the same artist's Othello 
and Hamlet. It is the simplest and most unsym- 
pathetic of the three; but the absence of the finer 
lineaments of Hamlet is redeemed by gusto, breadth, 
and a headlong unity. Salvini sees nothing great 
in Macbeth beyond the royalty of muscle, and that 
courage which comes of strong and copious circula- 
tion. The moral smallness of the man is insisted 
on from the first, in the shudder of uncontrollable 
jealousy with which he sees Duncan embracing 
Banquo. He may have some Northern poetry of 
speech, but he has not much logical understanding. 
In his dealings with the supernatural powers he is 
like a savage with his fetich, trusting them beyond 
bounds while all goes well, and whenever he is 
crossed, casting his behef aside and calling "fate 
into the list." For his wife, he is Httle more than 
an agent, a frame of bone and sinew for her fiery 
spirit to command. The nature of his feeling towards 
her is rendered with a most precise and dehcate 
touch. He always yields to the woman's fascina- 



SALVINFS MACBETH 167 

tion; and yet his caresses (and we know how much 
meaning Salvini can give to a caress) are singularly 
hard and unloving. Sometimes he lays his hand on 
her as he might take hold of any one who happened 
to be nearest to him at a moment of excitement. 
Love has fallen out of this marriage by the way, and 
left a curious friendship. Only once — at the very 
moment when she is showing herself so little a 
woman and so much a high-spirited man — only 
once is he very deeply stirred towards her; and 
that finds expression in the strange and horrible 
transport of admiration, doubly strange and hor- 
rible on Salvini's lips — " Bring forth men-children 
only!" 

The murder scene, as was to be expected, pleased 
the audience best. Macbeth's voice, in the talk with 
his wife, was a thing not to be forgotten; and when 
he spoke of his hangman's hands he seemed to have 
blood in his utterance. Never for a moment, even 
in the very article of the murder, does he possess 
his own saul. He is a man on wires. From first to 
last it is an exhibition of hideous cowardice. For, 
after all, it is not here, but in broad daylight, with 
the exhilaration of conflict, where he can assure him- 
self at every blow he has the longest sword and the 
heaviest hand, that this man's physical bravery can 
keep him up; he is an unwieldy ship, and needs 
plenty of way on before he will steer. 

In the banquet scene, while the first murderer 
gives account of what he has done, there comes a 
flash of truculent joy at the " twenty trenched gashes " 
on Banquo's head. Thus Macbeth makes welcome 



i68 CRITICISMS 

to his imagination those very details of physical 
horror which are so soon to turn sour in him. As 
he runs out to embrace these cruel circumstances, 
as he seeks to realise to his mind's eye the reassuring 
spectacle of his dead enemy, he is dressing out the 
phantom to terrify himself; and his imagination, 
playing the part of justice, is to "commend to his 
own lips the ingredients of his poisoned chalice." 
With the recollection of Hamlet and his father's 
spirit still fresh upon him, and the holy awe with 
which that good man encountered things not dreamt 
of in his philosophy, it was not possible to avoid 
looking for resemblances between the two appari- 
tions and the two men haunted. But there are none 
to be found. Macbeth has a purely physical dislike 
for Banquo's spirit and the "twenty trenched 
gashes." He is afraid of he knows not what. He 
is abject, and again blustering. In the end he so 
far forgets himself, his terror, and the nature of 
what is before him, that he rushes upon it as he 
would upon a man. When his wife tells him he 
needs repose, there is something really childish in 
the way he looks about the room, and, seeing 
nothing, with an expression of almosf sensual relief, 
plucks up heart enough to go to bed. And what is 
the upshot of the visitation ? It is written in Shake- 
speare, but should be read with the commentary of 
Salvini's voice and expression: — "O/ siam nell, 
opra ancor fanciulli,'''' — "We are yet young indeed." 
Circle below circle. He is looking with horrible 
satisfaction into the mouth of hell. There may 
still be a prick to-day; but to-morrow conscience 



SALVINFS MACBETH 169 

will be dead, and he may move untroubled in this 
element of blood. 

In the fifth act we see this lowest circle reached; 
and it is Salvini's finest moment throughout the 
play. From the first he was admirably made up, 
and looked Macbeth to the full as perfectly as ever 
he looked Othello. From the first moment he steps 
upon the stage you can see this character is a crea- 
tion to the fullest meaning of the phrase; for the 
man before you is a type you know well already. 
He arrives with Banquo on the heath, fair and red- 
bearded, sparing of gesture, full of pride and the 
sense of animal well-being, and satisfied after the 
battle like a beast who has eaten his fill. But in 
the fifth act there is a change. This is still the big, 
burly, fleshly, handsome-looking Thane; here is still 
the same face which in the earlier acts could be 
superficially good-humoured and sometimes royally 
courteous. But now the atmosphere of blood, which 
pervades the whole tragedy, has entered into the 
man and .subdued him to its own nature; and an 
indescribable degradation, a slackness and puffiness, 
has overtaken his features. He has breathed the 
air of carnage, and supped full of horrors. Lady 
Macbeth complains of the smell of blood on her 
hand : Macbeth makes no complaint — he has ceased 
to notice it now; but the same smell is in his nos- 
trils. A contained fury and disgust possesses him. 
He taunts the messenger and the doctor as people 
would taunt their mortal enemies. And, indeed, as 
he knows right well, every one is his enemy now, 
except his wife. About her he questions the doctor 



170 CRITICISMS 

with something like a last human anxiety; and, in 
tones of grisly mystery, asks him if he can "minister 
to a mind diseased." When the news of her death 
is brought him, he is staggered and falls into a seat; 
but somehow it is not anything we can call grief 
that he displays. There had been two of them 
against God and man; and now, when there is only 
one, it makes perhaps less difference than he had 
expected. And so her death is not only an afflic- 
tion, but one more disillusion; and he redoubles 
in bitterness. The speech that follows, given with 
tragic cynicism in every word, is a dirge, not so 
much for her as for himself. From that time forth 
there is nothing human left in him, only "the fiend 
of Scotland," Macduff's "hell-hound," whom, with 
a stern glee, we see baited like a bear and hunted 
down like a wolf. He is inspired and set above fate 
by a demoniacal energy, a lust of wounds and slaugh- 
ter. Even after he meets Macduff his courage does 
not fail; but when he hears the Thane was not born 
of woman, all virtue goes out of him; and though 
he speaks sounding words of defiance, the last com- 
bat is little better than a suicide. 

The whole performance is, as I said, so full of 
gusto and a headlong unity; the personality of 
Macbeth is so sharp and powerful; and within these 
somewhat narrow limits there is so much play and 
saliency that, so far as concerns Salvini himself, 
a third great success seems indubitable. Unfortu- 
nately, however, a great actor cannot fill more than 
a very small fraction of the boards; and though 
Banquo's ghost will probably be more seasonable 



SALVINFS MACBETH 171 

in his future apparitions, there are some more in- 
herent difficulties in the piece. The company at 
large did not distinguish themselves. Macduff, to 
the huge delight of the gallery, out-Macduff'd the 
average ranter. The lady who filled the principal 
female part has done better on other occasions, but 
I fear she has not metal for what she tried last week. 
Not to succeed in the sleep-walking scene is to make 
a memorable failure. As it was given, it succeeded 
in being wrong in art without being true to nature. 

And there is yet another difficulty, happily easy to 
reform, which somewhat interfered with the success 
of the performance. At the end of the incantation 
scene the Italian translator has made Macbeth fall 
insensible upon the stage. This is a change of 
questionable propriety from a psychological point of 
view; while in point of view of effect it leaves the 
stage for some moments empty of all business. To 
remedy this, a bevy of green ballet-girls came forth 
and pointed their toes about the prostrate king. 
A dance of High Church curates, or a hornpipe by 
Mr. T. P. Cooke, would not be more out of the key; 
though the gravity of a Scots audience v/as not to be 
overcome, and they merely expressed their disap- 
probation by a round of moderate hisses, a similar 
irruption of Christmas fairies would most likely 
convulse a London theatre from pit to gallery with 
inextinguishable laughter. It is, I am told, the 
Italian tradition; but it is one more honoured in 
the breach than the observance. With the total dis- 
appearance of these damsels, with a stronger Lady 
Macbeth, and, if possible, with some compression 



172 CRITICISMS 

of those scenes in which Salvini does not appear, 
and the spectator is left at the mercy of Macduffs 
and Duncans, the play would go twice as well, and 
we should be better able to follow and enjoy an 
admirable work of dramatic art. 



Ill 

BAGSTER'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 

I HAVE here before me an edition of the Pilgrirn's 
Progress, bound in green, without a date, and de- 
scribed as "illustrated by nearly three hundred 
engravings, and memoir of Bunyan." On the out- 
side it is lettered ''Bagster's Illustrated Edition," 
and after the author's apology, facing the first page 
of the tale, a folding pictorial "Plan of the Road" 
is marked as "drawn by the late Mr. T. Conder," 
and engraved by J. Basire. No further information 
is anywhere vouchsafed; perhaps the publishers had 
judged the work too unimportant; and we are 
still left ignorant whether or not we owe the wood- 
cuts in the body of the volume to the same hand that 
drew the plan. It seems, however, more than prob- 
able. The literal particularity of mind which, in 
the map, laid down the flower-plots in the devil's 
garden, and carefully introduced the court-house in 
the town of Vanity, is closely paralleled in many 
of the cuts; and in both, the architecture of the 
buildings and the disposition of the gardens have a 
kindred and entirely English air. Whoever he was 



"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 173 

the author of these wonderful Httle pictures may 
lay claim to be the best illustrator of Bunyan/ 
They are not only good illustrations, like so many 
others; but they are like so few, good illustrations 
of Bunyan. Their spirit, in defect and quality, is 
still the same as his own. The designer also has 
lain down and dreamed a dream, as literal, as quaint, 
and almost as apposite as Bunyan's; and text and 
pictures make but the two sides of the same home- 
spun yet impassioned story. To do justice to the 
designs, it will be necessary to say, for the hundredth 
time, a word or two about the masterpiece which 
they adorn. 

All allegories have a tendency to escape from the 
purpose of their creators; and as the characters 
and incidents become more and more interesting in 
themselves, the moral, which these were to show forth, 
falls more and more into neglect. An architect may 
command a wreath of vine-leaves round the cornice 
of a monument; but if, as each leaf came from the 
chisel, it took proper life and fluttered freely on the 
wall, and if the vine grew, and the building were 
hidden over with foliage and fruit, the architect 
would stand in much the same situation as the 
writer of allegories. The Faery Queen was an alle- 
gory, I am willing to believe; but it survives as 
an imaginative tale in incomparable verse. The 

' The illustrator was, in fact, a lady, Miss Eunice Bagster, eldest 
daughter of the publisher, Samuel Bagster, except in the case of the 
cuts depicting the fight with Apollyon, which were designed by her 
brother, Mr. Jonathan Bagster. The edition was published in 
1845. I am indebted for this information to the kindness of Mr. 
Robert Bagster, the present managing director of the firm. — [Ed.] 



174 CRITICISMS 

case of Bunyan is widely different; and yet in this 
also Allegory, poor nymph, although never quite 
forgotten, is sometimes rudely thrust against the 
wall. Bunyan was fervently in earnest; with "his 
fingers in his ears, he ran on," straight for his mark. 
He tells us himself, in the conclusion to the first part, 
that he did not fear to raise a laugh; indeed, he 
feared nothing, and said anything; and he was 
greatly served in this by a certain rustic privilege of 
his style, which, like the talk of strong uneducated 
men, when it does not impress by its force, still 
charms by its simplicity. The mere story and the 
allegorical design enjoyed perhaps his equal favour. 
He believed in both with an energy of faith that was 
capable of moving mountains. And we have to re- 
mark in him, not the parts where inspiration fails 
and is supplied by cold and merely decorative in- 
vention, but the parts where faith has grown to be 
credulity, and his characters become so real to him 
that he forgets the end of their creation. We can 
follow him step by step into the trap which he lays 
for himself by his own entire good faith and trium- 
phant literality of vision, till the trap closes and 
shuts him in an inconsistency. The allegories of the 
Interpreter and of the Shepherds of the Delectable 
Mountains are all actually performed, like stage- 
plays, before the pilgrims. The son of Mr. Great- 
grace visibly "tumbles hills about with his words." 
Adam the First has his condemnation written visibly 
on his forehead, so that Faithful reads it. At the 
very instant the net closes round the pilgrims, "the 
white robe falls from the black man's body." De- 



"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 175 

spair "getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel"; 
it was in "sunshiny weather" that he had his fits; 
and the birds in the grove about the House Beauti- 
ful, '^our country birds," only sing their little pious 
verses "at the spring, when the flowers appear and 
the sun shines warm." "I often," says Piety, "go 
out to hear them; we also ofttimes keep them tame 
on our house." The post between Beulah and the 
Celestial City sounds his horn, as you may yet 
hear in country places. Madam Bubble, that "tall, 
comely dame, something of a swarthy complexion, 
in very pleasant attire, but old," "gives you a smile 
at the end of each sentence" — a real woman she; 
we all know her. Christiana dying "gave Mr. 
Stand-fast a ring," for no possible reason in the 
allegory, merely because the touch was human and 
affecting. Look at Great-heart, with his soldierly 
ways, garrison ways, as I had almost called them; 
with his taste in weapons; his delight in any that 
"he found to be a man of his hands"; his chival- 
rous point of honour, letting Giant Maul get up 
again when he was down, a thing fairly flying in the 
teeth of the moral; above all, with his language in 
the inimitable tale of Mr. Fearing: "I thought I 
should have lost my man" — "chicken-hearted" — 
"at last he came in, and I will say that for my lord, 
he carried it wonderful lovingly to him." This is 
no Independent minister; this is a stout, honest, 
big-busted ancient, adjusting his shoulder-belts, 
twirling his long moustaches as he speaks. Last 
and most remarkable, "My sword," says the dying 
Valiant-for-Truth, he in whom Great-heart de- 



176 CRITICISMS 

lighted, "my sword I give to him that shall succeed 
me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to 
Mm that can get it^ And after this boast, more 
arrogantly unorthodox than was ever dreamed of 
by the rejected Ignorance, we are told that "all the 
trumpets sounded for him on the other side." 

In every page the book is stamped with the same 
energy of vision and the same energy of belief. 
The quality is equally and indifferently displayed in 
the spirit of the fighting, the tenderness of the pathos, 
the startling vigour and strangeness of the incidents, 
the natural strain of the conversations, and the hu- 
manity and charm of the characters. Trivial talk 
over a meal, the dying words of heroes, the delights 
of Beulah or the Celestial City, Apollyon and my 
Lord Hate-good, Great-heart, and Mr. Worldly 
Wiseman, all have been imagined with the same 
clearness, all written of with equal gusto and pre- 
cision, all created in the same mixed element, of sim- 
plicity, that is almost comical, and art that, for its 
purpose, is faultless. 

It was in much the same spirit that our artist sat 
down to his drawings. He is by nature a Bunyan 
of the pencil. He, too, will draw anything, from 
a butcher at work on a dead sheep, up to the courts 
of Heaven. "A Lamb for Supper" is the name 
of one of his designs, "Their Glorious Entry" of 
another. He has the same disregard for the ridicu- 
lous, and enjoys somewhat of the same privilege of 
style, so that we are pleased even when we laugh the 
most. He is literal to the verge of folly. If dust 
is to be raised from the unswept parlour, you may 



'TILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 177 

be sure it will '/fly abundantly" in the picture. 
If Faithful is to lie "as dead" before Moses, dead 
he shall lie with a warrant — dead and stiff like 
granite; nay (and here the artist must enhance upon 
the symbolism of the author), it is with the identical 
stone tables of the law that Moses fells the sinner. 
Good and bad people, whom we at once distinguish 
in the text by their names, Hopeful, Honest, and 
Valiant-for-Truth on the one hand, as against By- 
ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord Old-man on 
the other, are in these drawings as simply distin- 
guished by their costume. Good people, when not 
armed cap-a-pie^ wear a speckled tunic girt about 
the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad 
people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a 
few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in 
trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden- 
party. Worldly Wiseman alone, by some inexplica- 
ble quirk, stands before Christian in laced hat, 
embroidered waistcoat, and trunk-hose. But above 
all examples of this artist's intrepidity, commend 
me to the print entitled "Christian Finds it Deep." 
"A great darkness and horror," says the text, have 
fallen on the pilgrim; it is the comfortless death- 
bed with which Bunyan so strikingly concludes the 
sorrows and conflicts of his hero. How to represent 
this worthily the artist knew not; and yet he was 
determined to represent it somehow. This was 
how he did: Hopeful is still shown to his neck above 
the water of death; but Christian has bodily dis- 
appeared, and a blot of solid blackness indicates his 
place. 



178 CRITICISMS 

As you continue to look at these pictures, about 
an inch square for the most part, sometimes printed 
three or more to the page, and each having a printed 
legend of its own, however trivial the event recorded, 
you will soon become aware of two things: first, 
that the man can draw, and, second, that he pos- 
sesses the gift of an imagination. "Obstinate re- 
viles," says the legend; and you should see Obsti- 
nate reviling. "He warily retraces his steps"; 
and there is Christian, posting through the plain, 
terror and speed in every muscle. "Mercy yearns 
to go" shows you a plain interior with packing 
going forward, and, right in the middle, Mercy 
yearning to go — every line of the girl's figure yearn- 
ing. In "The Chamber called Peace" we see a 
simple Enghsh room, bed with white curtains, win- 
dow valance and door, as may be found in many 
thousand unpretentious houses; but far off, through 
the open window, we behold the sun uprising out of 
a great plain, and Christian hails it with his hand: 

"Where am I now! is this the love and care 
Of Jesus, for the men that pilgrims are! 
Thus to provide! That I should be forgiven! 
And dwell already the next door to heaven!" 

A page or two further, from the top of the House 
Beautiful, the damsels point his gaze towards the 
Delectable Mountains: "The Prospect," so the 
cut is ticketed — and I shall be surprised, if on less 
than a square of paper you can show me one so wide 
and fair. Down a cross-road on an English plain, 
a cathedral city outlined on the horizon, a hazel 



"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 179 

shaw upon the left, comes Madam Wanton dancing 
with her fair enchanted cup, and Faithful, book in 
hand, half pauses. The cut is perfect as a symbol: 
the giddy movement of the sorceress, the uncertain 
poise of the man struck to the heart by a temptation, 
the contrast of that even plain of life whereon he 
journeys with the bold, ideal bearing of the wanton — 
the artist who invented and portrayed this had not 
merely read Bunyan, he had also thoughtfully lived. 
The Delectable Mountains — I continue skimming 
the first part — are not on the whole happily rendered. 
Once, and once only, the note is struck, when Chris- 
tian and Hopeful are seen coming, shoulder-high, 
through a thicket of green shrubs — box, perhaps, 
or perfumed nutmeg; while behind them, domed or 
pointed, the hills stand ranged against the sky. A 
little further, and we come to that masterpiece of 
Bunyan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground; 
where, in a few traits, he has set down the latter end 
of such a number of the would-be good; where his 
allegory goes so deep that, to people looking seriously 
on life, it cuts like satire. The true significance of 
this invention lies, of course, far out of the way of 
drawing; only one feature, the great tedium of the 
land, the growing weariness in well-doing, may be 
somewhat represented in a symbol. The pilgrims 
are near the end: "Two Miles Yet," says the 
legend. The road goes ploughing up and down 
over a rolling heath; the wayfarers, with outstretched 
arms, are already sunk to the knees over the brow 
of the nearest hill; they have just passed a mile- 
stone with the cipher two; from overhead a great, 



i8o CRITICISMS 

piled, summer cumulus, as of a slumberous summer 
afternoon, beshadows them: two miles! it might be 
hundreds. In dealing with the Land of Beulah the 
artist lags, in both parts, miserably behind the text, 
but in the distant prospect of the Celestial City 
more than regains his own. You will remember 
when Christian and Hopeful "with desire fell sick.'' 
"Effect of the Sunbeams" is the artist's title. 
Against the sky, upon a chffy mountain, the radiant 
temple beams upon them over deep, subjacent woods; 
they, behind a mound, as if seeking shelter from the 
splendour — one prostrate on his face, one kneeling 
and with hands ecstatically lifted — yearn with pas- 
sion after that immortal city. Turn the page, and 
we behold them walking by the very shores of death; 
Heaven, from this nigher view, has risen half-way to 
the zenith, and sheds a wider glory; and the two 
pilgrims, dark against that brightness, walk and 
sing out of the fulness of their hearts. No cut more 
thoroughly illustrates at once the merit and the 
weakness of the artist. Each pilgrim sings with a 
book in his grasp — a family Bible at the least for 
bigness; tones so recklessly enormous that our second 
impulse is to laughter. And yet that is not the first 
thought, nor perhaps the last. Something in the 
attitude of the manikins — faces they have none, they 
are too small for that — something in the way they 
swing these monstrous volumes to their singing, 
something perhaps borrowed from the text, some 
subtle differentiation from the cut that went before 
and the cut that follows after — something, at least, 
speaks clearly of a fearful joy, of Heaven seen from 



^'PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" i8i 

the death-bed, of the horror of the last passage no 
less than of the glorious coming home. There is 
that in the action of one of them which always re- 
minds me, with a difference, of that haunting last 
glimpse of Thomas Idle, travelling to Tyburn in 
the cart. Next come the Shining Ones, wooden 
and trivial enough; the pilgrims pass into the river; 
the blot already mentioned settles over and obliter- 
ates Christian. In two more cuts we behold them 
drawing nearer to the other shore; and then, between 
two radiant angels, one of whom points upwards, we 
see them mounting in new weeds, their former lend- 
ings left behind them on the inky river. More 
angels meet them; Heaven is displayed, and if no 
better, certainly no worse, than it has been shown 
by others — a place, at least, infinitely populous and 
glorious with light — a place that haunts solemnly 
the hearts of children. And then this symbolic 
draughtsman once more strikes into his proper vein. 
Three cuts conclude the first part. In the first the 
gates close^ black against the glory struggling from 
within. The second shows us Ignorance — alas! poor 
Arminian! — hailing, in a sad twilight, the ferryman 
Vain-Hope; and in the third we behold him, bound 
hand and foot, and black already with the hue of 
his eternal fate, carried high over the mountain-tops 
of the world by two angels of the anger of the Lord. 
'' Carried to Another Place," the artist enigmatically 
names his plate — a terrible design. 

Wherever he touches on the black side of the 
supernatural his pencil grows more daring and 
incisive. He has many true inventions in the peril- 



i82 CRITICISMS 

ous and diabolic; he has many startling nightmares 
reaHsed. It is not easy to select the best; some 
may like one and some another; the nude, depilated 
devil bounding and casting darts against the Wicket 
Gate; the scroll of flying horrors that hang over 
Christian by the Mouth of Hell; the horned shade 
that comes behind him whispering blasphemies; the 
daylight breaking through that rent cave-mouth of 
the mountains and falling chill adown the haunted 
tunnel; Christian's further progress along the cause- 
way, between the two black pools, where, at every 
yard or two, a gin, a pitfall, or a snare awaits the 
passer-by — loathsome white devilkins harbouring 
close under the bank to work the springes, Christian 
himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point 
at the nearest noose, and pale discomfortable moun- 
tains rising on the farther side; or yet again, the 
two ill-favoured ones that beset the first of Christian's 
journey, with the frog-like structure of the skull, 
the frog-like limberness of limbs — crafty, slippery, 
lustful-looking devils, drawn always in outline as 
though possessed of a dim, infernal luminosity. 
Horrid fellows are they, one and all; horrid fellows 
and horrific scenes. In another spirit that Good- 
Conscience "to whom Mr. Honest had spoken in 
his lifetime," a cowled, grey, awful figure, one hand 
pointing to the heavenly shore, realises, I will not 
say all, but some at least of the strange impressiveness 
of Bunyan's words. It is no easy nor pleasant thing 
to speak in one's Hfetime with Good- Conscience; 
he is an austere, unearthly friend, whom maybe 
Torquemada knew; and the folds of his raiment 



"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 183 

are not merely claustral, but have something of the 
horror of the pall. Be not afraid, however; with 
the hand of that appearance Mr. Honest will get 
safe across. 

Yet perhaps it is in sequences that this artist best 
displays himself. He loves to look at either side of 
a thing: as, for instance, when he shows us both 
sides of the wall — "Grace Inextinguishable" on the 
one side, with the devil vainly pouring buckets on the 
fiame, and "The Oil of Grace" on the other, where 
the Holy Spirit, vessel in hand, still secretly supplies 
the fire. He loves, also, to show us the same event 
twice over, and to repeat his instantaneous photo- 
graphs at the interval of but a moment. So we 
have, first, the whole troop of Pilgrims coming up to 
Valiant, and Great-heart to the front, spear in hand 
and parleying; and next, the same cross-roads, from 
a more distant view, the convoy now scattered and 
looking safely and curiously on, and Valiant handing 
over for inspection his "right Jerusalem blade." It 
is true that this designer has no great care after 
consistency: Apollyon's spear is laid by, his quiver 
of darts will disappear, whenever they might hin- 
der the designer's freedom; and the fiend's tail is 
blobbed or forked at his good pleasure. But this 
is not unsuitable to the illustration of the fervent 
Bunyan, breathing hurry and momentary inspiration. 
He, with his hot purpose, hunting sinners with a 
lasso, shall himself forget the things that he has 
written yesterday. He shall first slay Heedless in 
the Valley of the Shadow, and then take leave of 
him talking in his sleep, as if nothing Imd happened, 



i84 CRITICISMS 

in an arbour on the Enchanted Ground. And again, 
in his rhymed prologue, he shall assign some of the 
glory of the siege of Doubting Castle to his favourite 
Valiant-for- Truth, who did not meet with the be- 
siegers till long after, at that dangerous corner by 
Deadman's Lane. And, with all inconsistencies and 
freedoms, there is a power shown in these sequences 
of cuts: a power of joining on one action or one 
humour to another; a power of following out the 
moods, even of the dismal subterhuman fiends en- 
gendered by the artist's fancy; a power of sustained 
continuous realisation, step by step, in nature's 
order, that can tell a story, in all its ins and outs, its 
pauses and surprises, fully and figuratively, like the 
art of words. 

One such sequence is the fight of Christian and 
Apollyon — six cuts, weird and fiery, like the text. 
The pilgrim is throughout a pale and stockish figure; 
but the devil covers a multitude of defects. There 
is no better devil of the conventional order than 
our artist's Apollyon, with his mane, his wings, his 
bestial legs, his changing and terrifying expression, 
his infernal energy to slay. In cut the first you 
see him afar off, still obscure in form, but already 
formidable in suggestion. Cut the second, "The 
Fiend in Discourse," represents him, not reasoning, 
railing rather, shaking his spear at the pilgrim, his 
shoulder advanced, his tail writhing in the air, his 
foot ready for a spring, while Christian stands back 
a little, timidly defensive. The third illustrates 
these magnificent words: "Then Apollyon strad- 
dled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and 



"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 185 

said, I am void of fear in this matter: prepare thy- 
self to die; for I swear by my infernal den that thou 
shalt go no farther: here will I spill thy soul! And 
with that he threw a flaming dart at his breast." In 
the cut he throws a dart with either hand, belching 
pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his 
broad vans, and straddhng the while across the path, 
as only a fiend can straddle who has just sworn by 
his infernal den. The defence will not be long 
against such vice, such flames, such red-hot nether 
energy. And in the fourth cut, to be sure, he has 
leaped bodily upon his victim, sped by foot and 
pinion, and roaring as he leaps. The fifth shows 
the chmacteric of the battle; Christian has reached 
nimbly out and got his sword, and dealt that deadly 
home-thrust, the fiend still stretched upon him, but 
"giving back, as one that had received his mortal 
wound." The raised head, the bellowing mouth, 
the paw clapped upon the sword, the one wing re- 
laxed in agony, all reahse vividly these words of the 
text. In the sixth and last, the trivial armed figure 
of the pilgrim is seen kneehng with clasped hands 
on the betrodden scene of contest and among the 
shivers of the darts; while just at the margin the 
hinder quarters and the tail of Apollyon are whisking 
off, indignant and discomfited. 

In one point only do these pictures seem to be un- 
worthy of the text, and that point is one rather of 
the difference of arts than the difference of artists. 
Throughout his best and worst, in his highest and 
most divine imaginations as in the narrowest sallies 
of his sectarianism, the human-hearted piety of 



i86 CRITICISMS 

Bunyan touches and ennobles, convinces, accuses 
the reader. Through no art besides the art of 
words can the kindness of a man's affections be ex- 
pressed. In the cuts you shall find faithfully paro- 
died the quaintness and the power, the triviahty and 
the surprising freshness of the author's fancy; there 
you shall find him outstripped in ready symbolism 
and the art of bringing things essentially invisible 
before the eyes: but to feel the contact of essential 
goodness, to be made in love with piety, the book 
must be read and not the prints examined. 

Farewell should not be taken with a grudge; nor 
can I dismiss in any other words than those of grati- 
tude a series of pictures which have, to one at least, 
been the visible embodiment of Bunyan from child- 
hood up, and shown him, through all his years, 
Great-heart lungeing at Giant Maul, and Apollyon 
breathing fire at Christian, and every turn and town 
along the road to the Celestial City, and that bright 
place itself, seen as to a stave of music, shining afar 
off upon the hill-top, the candle of the world. 



SKETCHES 



The joUowiug "SketcJics" (so named 
by the writer) are jrom unpublished 
MSS. 0} 1870 to 1871. 



SKETCHES 



THE SATIRIST 



MY companion enjoyed a cheap reputation 
for wit and insight. He was by habit and 
repute a satirist. If he did occasionally 
condemn anything or anybody who richly deserved 
it, and whose demerits had hitherto escaped, it was 
simply because he condemned everything and every- 
body. While I was with him he disposed of St. 
Paul with an epigram, shook my reverence for 
Shakespeare in a neat antithesis, and fell foul of the 
Almighty himself, on the score of one or two out 
of the ten commandments. Nothing escaped his 
blighting censure. At every sentence he overthrew 
an idol, or lowered my estimation of a friend. I saw 
everything with new eyes, and could only marvel at 
my former blindness. How was it possible that I 
had not before observed A's false hair, B's selfishness, 
or C's boorish manners ? I and my companion, me- 
thought, walked the streets like a couple of gods 
among a swarm of vermin; for every one we saw 
seemed to bear openly upon his brow the mark of 
the apocalyptic beast. I half expected that these 
miserable beings, like the people of Lystra, would 



iQo SKETCHES 

recognise their betters and force us to the altar; in 
which case, warned by the fate of Paul and Barna- 
bas, I do not know that my modesty would have 
prevailed upon me to decline. But there was no 
need for such churlish virtue. More blinded than 
the Lycaonians, the people saw no divinity in our 
gait; and as our temporary godhead lay more in the 
way of observing than healing their infirmities, we 
were content to pass them by in scorn. 

I could not leave my companion, not from regard 
or even from interest, but from a very natural feeling, 
inseparable from the case. To understand it, let us 
take a simile. Suppose yourself walking down the 
street with a man who continues to sprinkle the crowd 
out of a flask of vitriol. You would be much di- 
verted with the grimaces and contortions of his vic- 
tims; and at the same time you would fear to leave 
his arm until his bottle was empty, knowing that, 
when once among the crowd, you would run a good 
chance yourself of baptism with his biting liquor. 
Now my companion's vitriol was inexhaustible. 

It was perhaps the consciousness of this, the 
knowledge that I was being anointed already out of 
the vials of his wrath, that made me fall to criticising 
the critic, whenever we had parted. 

After all, I thought, our satirist has just gone far 
enough into his neighbours to find that the outside 
is false, without caring to go farther and discover 
what is really true. He is content to find that things 
are not what they seem, and broadly generalises 
from it that they do not exist at all. He sees our 
virtues are not what they pretend they are; and, on 



THE SATIRIST 191 

the strength of that, he denies us the possession of 
virtue altogether. He has learnt the first lesson, that 
no man is wholly good; but he has not even sus- 
pected that there is another equally true, to wit, that 
no man is wholly bad. Like the inmate of a coloured 
star, he has eyes for one colour alone. He has a 
keen scent after evil, but his nostrils are plugged 
against all good, as people plugged their nostrils 
before going about the streets of the plague-struck 
city. 

Why does he do this ? It is most unreasonable to 
flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a 
horrible disease, and batten and grow fat in the 
real atmosphere of a lazar-house. This was my 
first thought; but my second was not like unto it, 
and I saw that our satirist was wise, wise in his 
generation, like the unjust steward. He does not 
want light, because the darkness is more pleasant. 
He does not wish to see the good, because he is 
happier without it. I recollect that when I walked 
with him, !• was in a state of divine exaltation, such 
as Adam and Eve must have enjoyed when the 
savour of the fruit was still unfaded between their 
lips; and I recognise that this must be the man's 
habitual state. He has the forbidden fruit in his 
waistcoat pocket, and can make himself a god as 
often and as long as he likes. He has raised himself 
upon a glorious pedestal above his fellows; he has 
touched the summit of ambition; and he envies 
neither King nor Kaiser, Prophet nor Priest, con- 
tent in an elevation as high as theirs, and much more 
easily attained. Yes, certes, much more easily at- 



192 SKETCHES 

tained. He has not risen by climbing himself, but 
by pushing others down. He has grown great in his 
own estimation, not by blowing himself out, and 
risking the fate of /Esop's frog, but simply by the 
habitual use of a diminishing glass on everybody 
else. And I think altogether that his is a better, a 
a safer, and a surer recipe than most others. 

After all, however, looking back on what I have 
written, I detect a spirit suspiciously like his own. 
All through, I have been comparing myself with our 
Satirist, and all through, I have had the best of the 
comparison. Well, well, contagion is as often men- 
tal as physical; and I do not think my readers, who 
have all been under his lash, will blame me very 
much for giving the headsman a mouthful of his 
own sawdust. 

II 

NUITS BLANCHES 

If any one should know the pleasure and pain of 
a sleepless night, it should be I. I remember, so 
long ago, the sickly child that woke from his few 
hours' slumber with the sweat of a nightmare on his 
brow, to lie awake and Hsten and long for the first 
signs of life among the silent streets. These nights 
of pain and weariness are graven on my mind; and 
so when the same thing happened to me again, 
everything that I heard or saw was rather a recollec- 
tion than a discovery. 

Weighed upon by the opaque and almost sensible 



NUITS BLANCHES 193 

darkness, I listened eagerly for anything to break 
the sepulchral quiet. But nothing came, save, per- 
haps, an emphatic crack from the old cabinet that 
was made by Deacon Brodie, or the dry rustle of 
the coals on the extinguished fire. It was a calm; 
or I know that I should have heard in the roar and 
clatter of the storm, as I have not heard it for so 
many years, the wild career of a horseman, always 
scouring up from the distance and passing swiftly 
below the window; yet always returning again from 
the place whence first he came, as though, baffied 
by some higher power, he had retraced his steps to 
gain impetus for another and another attempt. 

As I lay there, there arose out of the utter stillness 
the rumbling of a carriage a very great way off, 
that drew near, and passed within a few streets of 
the house, and died away as gradually as it had 
arisen. This, too, was a reminiscence. 

I rose and lifted a corner of the blind. Over the 
black belt of the garden I saw the long line of Queen 
Street, with, here and there a lighted window. How 
often before had my nurse hfted me out of bed'and 
pointed them out to me, while we wondered together 
if, there also, there were children that could not 
sleep, and if these lighted oblongs were signs of those 
that waited like us for the morning. 

I went out into the lobby, and looked down into 
the great deep well of the staircase. For what cause 
I know not, just as it used to be in the old days that 
the feverish child might be the better served, a peep 
of gas illuminated a narrow circle far below me. 
But where I was, all was darkness and silence, save 



194 SKETCHES 

the dry monotonous ticking of the clock that came 
ceaselessly up to my ear. 

The final crown of it all, however, the last touch 
of reproduction on the pictures of my memory, was 
the arrival of that time for which, all night through, 
I waited and longed of old. It was my custom, as 
the hours dragged on, to repeat the question, "When 
will the carts come in?" and repeat it again and 
again until at last those sounds arose in the street 
that I have heard once more this morning. The 
road before our house is a great thoroughfare for 
early carts. I know not, and I never have known, 
what they carry, whence they come, or whither they 
go. But I know that, long ere dawn, and for hours 
together, they stream continuously past, with the 
same rolling and jerking of wheels and the same clink 
of horses' feet. It was not for nothing that they 
made the burthen of my wishes all night through.. 
They are really the first throbbings of life, the harbin- 
gers of day; and it pleases you as much to hear them 
as it must please a shipwrecked seaman once again 
to grasp a hand of flesh and blood after years of 
miserable solitude. They have the freshness of the 
dayhght life about them. You can hear the carters 
cracking their whips and crying hoarsely to their 
horses or to one another; and sometimes even a 
peal of healthy, harsh horse-laughter comes up to 
you through the darkness. There is now an end 
of mystery and fear. Like the knocking at the door 
in Macbeth,^ or the cry of the watchman in the Tour 
de Nesky they show that the horrible caesura is over 

1 See a short essay of De Quincey's. 



THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 195 

and the nightmares have fled away, because the day 
is breaking and the ordinary hfe of men is beginning 
to bestir itself among the streets. 

In the middle of it all I fell asleep, to be awakened 
by the ofHcious knocking at my door, and I find my- 
self twelve years older than I had dreamed myself 
all night. 

III 

THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 

It is all very well to talk of death as "a pleasant 
potion of immortality"; but the most of us, I sus- 
pect, are of "queasy stomachs," and find it none of 
the sweetest.^ The graveyard may be cloak-room 
to Heaven; but we must admit that it is a very 
ugly and offensive vestibule in itself, however fair 
may be the life to which it leads. And though 
Enoch and Elias went into the temple through a 
gate which certainly may be called Beautiful, the 
rest of us have to find our way to it through Ezekiel's 
low-bowed door and the vault full of creeping things 
and all manner of abominable beasts. Neverthe- 
less, there is a certain frame of mind to which a 
cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an allevia- 
tion. If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere 
else. It was in obedience to this wise regulation that 
the other morning found me lighting my pipe at 
the entrance to Old Greyfriars', thoroughly sick of 
the town, the country, and myself. 

I Rdigio Medici, Part ii. 



196 SKETCHES 

Two of the men were talking at the gate, one of 
them carrying a spade in hands still crusted with 
the soil of graves. Their aspect was delightful to 
me; and I crept nearer to them, thinking to pick 
up some snatch of sexton gossip, some "talk fit for 
a charnel," ^ something, in fine, worthy of that fas- 
tidious logician, that adept in coroner's law, who has 
come down to us as the patron of Yaughan's liquor, 
and the very prince of gravediggers. Scots people 
in general are so much wrapped up in their pro- 
fession that I had a good chance of overhearing 
such conversation: the talk of fishmongers running 
usually on stockfish and haddocks; while of the 
Scots sexton I could repeat stories and speeches that 
positively smell of the graveyard. But on this oc- 
casion I was doomed to disappointment. My two 
friends were far into the region of generalities. Their 
profession was forgotten in their electorship. Poli- 
tics had engulfed the narrower economy of grave- 
digging. "Na, na," said the one, "ye 're a' wrang." 
"The English and Irish Churches," answered the 
other, in a tone as if he had made the remark be- 
fore, and it had been called in question — " The Eng- 
lish and Irish Churches have impoverished the coun- 
try." 

"Such are the results of education," thought I as 
I passed beside them and came fairly among the 
tombs. Here, at least, there were no commonplace 
politics, no diluted this-morning's leader, to distract 
or offend me. The old shabby church showed, as 
usual, its quaint extent of roofage and the relievo 

1 Duchess of Malft. 



THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 197 

skeleton on one gable, still blackened with the fire 
of thirty years ago. A chill dank mist lay over all. 
The Old Greyfriars' churchyard was in perfection 
that morning, and one could go round and reckon up 
the associations with no fear of vulgar interruption. 
On this stone the Covenant was signed. In that 
vault, as the story goes, John Knox took hiding in 
some Reformation broil. From that window Burke 
the murderer looked out many a time across the 
tombs, and perhaps o' nights let himself down over 
the sill to rob some new-made grave. Certainly he 
would have a selection here. The very walks have 
been carried over forgotten resting-places; and the 
whole ground is uneven, because (as I was once 
quaintly told) " when the wood rots it stands to reason 
the soil should fall in," which, from the law of gravi- 
tation, is certainly beyond denial. But it is round the 
boundary that there are the finest tombs. The whole 
irregular space is, as it were, fringed with quaint 
old monuments, rich in death's-heads and scythes 
and hour-glasses, and doubly rich in pious epitaphs 
and Latin mottoes — rich in them to such an extent 
that their proper space has run over, and they have 
crawled end-long up the shafts of columns and en 
sconced themselves in all sorts of odd corners among 
the sculpture. These tombs raise their backs against 
the rabble of squalid dwelling-houses, and every 
here and there a clothes-pole projects between two 
monuments its fluttering trophy of white and yellow 
and red. With a grim irony they recall the banners 
in the Invalides, banners as appropriate perhaps 
over the sepulchres of tailors and weavers as these 



198 SKETCHES 

others above the dust of armies. Why they put 
things out to dry on that particular morning it was 
hard to imagine. The grass was grey with drops 
of rain, the headstones black with moisture. Yet, 
in despite of weather and common-sense, there they 
hung between the tombs; and beyond them I could 
see through open windows into miserable rooms where 
whole families were born and fed, and slept and 
died. At one a girl sat singing merrily with her 
back to the graveyard; and from another came the 
shrill tones of a scolding woman. Every here and 
there was a town garden full of sickly flowers, or 
a pile of crockery inside upon the window-seat. 
But you do not grasp the full connection between 
these houses of the dead and the living, the unnatural 
marriage of stately sepulchres and squalid houses, 
till, lower down, where the road has sunk far below 
the surface of the cemetery, and the very roofs are 
scarcely on a level with its wall, you observe that a 
proprietor has taken advantage of a tall monument 
and trained a chimney-stack against its back. It 
startles you to see the red, modern pots peering over 
the shoulder of the tomb. 

A man was at work on a grave, his spade clink- 
ing away the drift of bones that permeates the thin 
brown soil; but my first disappointment had taught 
me to expect little from Greyfriars' sextons, and I 
passed him by in silence. A slater on the slope of a 
neighbouring roof eyed me curiously. A lean black 
cat, looking as if it had battened on strange meats, 
slipped past me. A little boy at a window put his 
finger to his nose in so offensive a manner that I was 



THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 199 

put upon my dignity, and turned grandly off to read 
old epitaphs and peer through the gratings into the 
shadow of vaults. 

Just then I saw two women coming down a path, 
one of them old, and the other younger, with a child 
in her arms. Both had faces eaten with famine and 
hardened with sin, and both had reached that stage 
of degradation, much lower in a woman than a 
man, when all care for dress is lost. As they came 
down they neared a grave, where some pious friend 
or relative had laid a wreath of immortelles, and put 
a bell glass over it, as is the custom. The effect of 
that ring of dull yellow among so many blackened 
and dusty sculptures was more pleasant than it is in 
modern cemeteries, where every second mound can 
boast a similar coronal; and here, where it was the 
exception and not the rule, I could even fancy the 
drops of moisture that dimmed the covering were 
the tears of those who laid it where it was. As the 
two women came up to it, one of them kneeled down 
on the wet grass and looked long and silently through 
the clouded shade, while the second stood above her, 
gently oscillating to and fro to lull the muling baby. 
I was struck a great way off with something religious 
in the attitude of these two unkempt and haggard 
women; and I drew near faster, but still cautiously, 
to hear what they were saying. Surely on them the 
spirit of death and decay had descended: I had no 
education to dread here : should I not have a chance 
of seeing nature? Alas! a pawnbroker could not 
have been more practical and commonplace, for this 
was what the kneeling woman said to the woman 



200 SKETCHES 

upright — this and nothing more: " Eh, what extrav- 
agance!" 

O nineteenth century, wonderful art thou indeed — 
wonderful, but wearisome in thy stale and deadly 
uniformity. Thy men are more like numerals than 
men. They must bear their idiosyncrasies or their 
professions written on a placard about their neck, 
like the scenery in Shakespeare's theatre. Thy pre- 
cepts of economy have pierced into the lowest ranks 
of life; and there is now a decorum in vice, a re- 
spectability among the disreputable, a pure spirit 
of Phihstinism among the waifs and strays of thy 
Bohemia. For lo! thy very gravediggers talk poli- 
tics; and thy castaways kneel upon new graves, to 
discuss the cost of the monument and grumble at the 
improvidence of love. 

Such was the elegant apostrophe that I made as I 
went out of the gates again, happily satisfied in 
myself, and feeling that I alone of all whom I had 
seen was able to profit by the silent poem of these 
green mounds and blackened headstones. 



IV 

NURSES 

I KNEW one once, and the room where, lonely and 
old, she waited for death. It was pleasant enough, 
high up above the- lane, and looking forth upon a 
hillside, covered all day with sheets and yellow 
blankets, and with long lines of underclothing flut- 



NURSES 201 

tering between the battered posts. There were any 
number of cheap prints, and a drawing by one of 
"her children," and there were flowers in the win- 
dow, and a sickly canary withered into consumption 
in an ornamental cage. The bed, with its checkered 
coverlid, was in a closet. A great Bible lay on the 
table; and her drawers were full of "scones," which 
it was her pleasure to give to young visitors such as 
I was then. 

You may not think this a melancholy picture; 
but the canary, and the cat, and the white mouse 
that she had for a while, and that died, were all in- 
dications of the want that ate into her heart. I 
think I know a little of what that old woman felt; 
and I am as sure as if I had seen her, that she sat 
many an hour in silent tears, with the big Bible 
open before her clouded eyes. 

If you could look back upon her life, and feel the 
great chain that had linked her to one child after 
another, sometimes to be wrenched suddenly through, 
and sometimes, which is infinitely worse, to be torn 
gradually off through years of growing neglect, or 
perhaps growing dislike! She had, hke the moth- 
er, overcome that natural repugnance — repugnance 
which no man can conquer — towards the infirm and 
helpless mass of putty of the earlier stage. She had 
spent her best and happiest years in tending, watch- 
ing, and learning to love like a mother this child, 
with which she has no connection and to which she 
has no tie. Perhaps she refused some sweetheart 
(such things have been), or put him off and off, 
until he lost heart and turned to some one else, all for 



202 SKETCHES 

fear of leaving this creature that had wound itself 
about her heart. And the end of it all, — her month's 
warning, and a present perhaps, and the rest of 
the life to vain regret. Or, worse still, to see the 
child gradually forgetting and forsaking her, fos- 
tered in disrespect and neglect on the plea of grow- 
ing manliness, and at last beginning to treat her as 
a servant whom he had treated a few years before 
as a mother. She sees the Bible or the Psalm-book, 
which with gladness and love unutterable in her 
heart she had bought for him years ago out of her 
slender savings, neglected for some newer gift of 
his father, lying in dust in the lumber-room or given 
away to a poor child, and the act applauded for 
its unfeeling charity. Little wonder if she becomes 
hurt and angry, and attempts to tyrannise and to 
grasp her old power back again. We are not all 
patient Grizzels, by good fortune, but the most of us 
human beings with feelings and tempers of our own. 
And so in the end, behold her in the room that I 
described. Very likely and very naturally, in some 
fling of feverish misery or recoil of thwarted love, she 
has quarrelled with her old employers and the chil- 
dren are forbidden to see her or to speak to her; or 
at best she gets her rent paid and a little to herself, 
and now and then her late charges are sent up (with 
another nurse, perhaps) to pay her a short visit. 
How bright these visits seem as she looks forward 
to them on her lonely bed! How unsatisfactory 
their realisation, when the forgetful child, half won- 
dering, checks with every word and action the out- 
pouring of her maternal love! How bitter and 



NURSES 203 

restless the memories that they leave behind! And 
for the rest, what else has she ? — to watch them with 
eager eyes as they go to school, to sit in church 
where she can see them every Sunday, to be passed 
some day unnoticed in the street, or deliberately 
cut because the great man or the great woman are 
with friends before whom they are ashamed to recog- 
nise the old woman that loved them. 

When she goes home that night, how lonely will 
the room appear to her! Perhaps the neighbours 
may hear her sobbing to herself in the dark, with 
the fire burnt out for want of fuel, and the candle 
still unlit upon the table. 

And it is for this that they live, these quasi-mothers 
— mothers in everything but the travail and the 
thanks. It is for this that they have remained vir- 
tuous in youth, Hving the dull life of a household 
servant. It is for this that they refused the old sweet- 
heart, and have no fireside or offspring of their ovm. 

I beheve in a better state of things, that there will 
be no more .nurses, and that every mother will nurse 
her own offspring; for what can be more hardening 
and demoralising than to call forth the tenderest 
feelings of a woman's heart and cherish them your- 
self as long as you need them, as long as your chil- 
dren require a nurse to love them, and then to blight 
and thwart and destroy them, whenever your own 
use for them is at an end? This may be Utopian; 
but it is always a little thing if one mother or two 
mothers can be brought to feel more tenderly to 
those who share their toil and have no part in their 
reward. 



204 SKETCHES 



A CHARACTER 

The man has a red, bloated face, and his figure 
is short and squat. So far there is nothing in him 
to notice, but when you see his eyes, you can read 
in these hard and shallow orbs a depravity beyond 
measure depraved, a thirst after wickedness, the 
pure, disinterested love of Hell for its own sake. 
The other night, in the street, I was watching an 
omnibus passing with lit-up windows, when I heard 
some one coughing at my side as though he would 
cough his soul out; and turning round, I saw him 
stopping under a lamp, with a brown greatcoat but- 
toned round him and his whole face convulsed. It 
seemed as if he could not live long; and so the sight 
set my mind upon a train of thought, as I finished 
my cigar up and down the lighted streets. 

He is old, but all these years have not yet quenched 
his thirst for evil, and his eyes still delight themselves 
in wickedness. He is dumb; but he will not let 
that hinder his foul trade, or perhaps I should say, 
his yet fouler amusement, and he has pressed a 
slate into the service of corruption. Look at him, 
and he will sign to you with his bloated head, and 
when you go to him in answer to the sign, thinking 
perhaps that the poor dumb man has lost his way, 
you will see what he writes upon his slate. He 
haunts the doors of schools, and shows such in- 
scriptions as these to the innocent children that 



A CHARACTER 205 

come out. He hangs about picture-galleries, and 
makes the noblest pictures the text for some silent 
homily of vice. His industry is a lesson to ourselves. 
Is it not wonderful how he can triumph over his 
infirmities and do such an amount of harm without 
a tongue? Wonderful industry — strange, fruitless, 
pleasureless toil? Must not the very devil feel a 
soft emotion to see his disinterested and laborious 
service? Ah, but the devil knows better than this: 
he knows that this man is penetrated with the love 
of evil and that all his pleasure is shut up in wicked- 
ness: he recognises him, perhaps, as a fit type for 
mankind of his satanic self, and watches over his 
effigy as we might watch over a favourite likeness. 
As the business man comes to love the toil, which 
he only looked upon at first as a ladder towards 
other desires and less unnatural gratifications, so 
the dumb man has felt the charm of his trade and 
fallen captivated before the eyes of sin. It is a mis- 
take when preachers tell us that vice is hideous and 
loathsome; for even vice has her Horsel and her 
devotees, who love her for her own sake. 



THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 



Posthumously published, Illustrated London News.^ 
Christmas, 1895 



Copyright, 1895, by John Brisben Walker 



THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
I 

NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 

NANCE HOLD AWAY was on her knees be- 
fore the fire, blowing the green wood that 
voluminously smoked upon the dogs, and 
only now and then shot forth a smothered flame; 
her knees already ached and her eyes smarted, for 
she had been some while at this ungrateful task, 
but her mind was gone far away to meet the coming 
stranger. Now she met him in the wood, now at 
the castle gate, now in the kitchen by candle-light; 
each fresh presentment eclipsed the one before; a 
form so elegant, manners so sedate, a countenance 
so brave and comely, a voice so winning and resolute 
— sure such a man was never seen! The thick- 
coming fancies poured and brightened in her head 
like the smoke and flames upon the hearth. 

Presently the heavy foot of her Uncle Jonathan 
was heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room 
she bent the closer to her work. He glanced at the 
green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the 
bed and the white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, 
like an island, on the great expanse of the stone floor, 
and at the broken glazing of the casement clumsily 
repaired with paper. 

209 



210 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

"Leave that fire a-be," he cried. "What, have 
I toiled all my life to turn innkeeper at the hind 
end? Leave it a-be, I say.'' 

" La, uncle, it does n't burn a bit; it only smokes," 
said Nance, looking up from her position. 

"You are come of decent people on both sides," 
returned the old man. "Who are you to blow the 
coals for any Robin-run-agate ? Get up, get on your 
hood, make yourself useful, and be off to the Green 
Dragon." 

"I thought you was to go yourself," Nance fal- 
tered. 

"So did I," quoth Jonathan; "but it appears I 
was mistook." 

The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and 
she began to hang back. "I think I would rather 
not, dear uncle," she said. "Night is at hand, and 
I think, dear, I would rather not." 

"Now you look here," rephed Jonathan; "I have 
have my Lord's orders, have I not ? Little he gives 
me, but it 's all my livelihood. And do you fancy, 
if I disobey my Lord, I 'm likely to turn round for 
a lass like you? No; I 've that hell-fire of pain in 
my old knee, I would n't walk a mile, not for King 
George upon his bended knees." And he walked 
to the window and looked down the steep scarp to 
where the river foamed in the bottom of the dell. 

Nance stayed for no more bidding. In her own 
room, by the ghmmer of the twilight, she washed her 
hands and pulled on her Sunday mittens; adjusted 
her black hood, and tied a dozen times its cherry 
ribbons; and in less than ten minutes, with a flutter- 



NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 211 

ing heart and excellently bright eyes, she passed forth 
under the arch and over the bridge, into the thick- 
ening shadows of the groves. A well-marked wheel- 
track conducted her. The wood, which upon both 
sides of the river dell was a mere scrambling thicket 
of hazel, hawthorn, and holly, boasted on the level 
of more considerable timber. Beeches came to a 
good growth, with here and there an oak; and the 
track now passed under a high arcade of branches, 
and now ran under the open sky in glades. As the 
girl proceeded these glades became more frequent, 
the trees began again to decline in size, and the 
wood to degenerate into furzy coverts. Last of all 
there was a fringe of elders; and beyond that the 
track came forth upon an open, rolling moorland, 
dotted with wind-bowed and scanty bushes, and all 
golden-brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right 
over against the girl the last red embers of the sun 
set burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell 
clear and still and frosty, and the track in low and 
marshy passages began to crackle underfoot with ice. 
Some half a mile beyond the borders of the wood 
the lights of the Green Dragon hove in sight, and 
running close beside them, very faint in the dying 
dusk, the pale ribbon of the Great North Road. It 
was the back of the post-house that was presented to 
Nance Holdaway; and as she continued to draw 
near and the night to fall more completely, she be- 
came aware of an unusual brightness and bustle. 
A post-chaise stood in the yard, its lamps already 
lighted: light shone hospitably in the windows and 
from the open door; moving lights and shadows 



212 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

testified to the activity of servants bearing lanterns. 
The clank of pails, the stamping of hoofs on the 
firm causev^ay, the jingle of harness, and, last of 
all, the energetic hissing of a groom, began to fall 
upon her ear. By the stir you would have thought 
the mail was at the door, but it was still too early in 
the night. The down mail was not due at the Green 
Dragon for hard upon an hour; the up mail from 
Scotland not before two in the black morning. 

Nance entered the yard somewhat dazzled. Sam, 
the tall hostler, was polishing the curb-chain with 
sand; the lantern at his feet letting up spouts of 
candle-light through the holes with which its conical 
roof was peppered. 

"Hey, miss," said he, jocularly, "you won't look 
at me any more, now you have gentry at the castle." 

Her cheeks burned with anger. 

"That's my Lord's chay," the man continued, 
nodding at the chaise; "Lord Windermoor's. Came 
all in a fluster — dinner, bowl of punch, and put the 
horses to. For all the world like a runaway match, 
my dear — ^bar the bride. He brought Mr. Archer 
in the chay with him." 

"Is that Holdaway?" cried the landlord from the 
lighted entry, where he stood shading his eyes. 

"Only me, sir," answered Nance. 

"O, you, Miss Nance," he said. "Well, come in 
quick, my pretty. My Lord is waiting for your 
uncle." 

And he ushered Nance into a room cased with 
yellow wainscot and lighted by tall candles, where 
two gentlemen sat at a table finishing a bowl of punch. 



NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 213 

One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with 
a face like a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick 
tremulous lips, a short purple hand, in which he 
brandished a long pipe, and an abrupt and gobbling 
utterance. This was my Lord Windermoor. In his 
companion, Nance beheld a younger man, tall, quiet, 
grave, demurely dressed, and wearing his own hair. 
Her glance but lighted on him, and she flushed, for 
in that second she made sure that she had twice be- 
trayed herself — betrayed by the involuntary flash of 
her black eyes her secret impatience to behold this 
new companion, and, what was far worse, betrayed 
her disappointment in the reahsation of her dreams. 
He, meanwhile, as if unconscious, continued to re- 
gard her with unmoved decorum. 

"O, a man of wood," thought Nance. 

"What— what?" said his Lordship. "Who is 
this?" 

" If you please, my Lord, I am Holdaway's niece," 
replied Nance, with a courtesy. 

"Should have been here himself," observed his 
Lordship. "Well, you tell Holdaway that I'm 
aground; not a stiver — n'ot a stiver. I'm running 
from the beagles — going abroad, tell Holdaway. 
And he need look for no more wages: glad of 'em 
myself, if I could get 'em. He can live in the castle 
if he likes, or go to the devil. O, and here is Mr. 
Archer; and I recommend him to take him in — a 
friend of mine — and Mr. Archer will pay, as I wrote. 
And I regard that in the light of a precious good 
thing for Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off 
against the wages." 



214 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

"But O, my Lord!" cried Nance, "we live upon 
the wages, and what are we to do without?" 

"What am I to do? — what am I to do?" replied 
Lord Windermoor, with some exasperation. "I 
have no wages. And there is Mr. Archer. And if 
Holdaway does n't like it, he can go to the devil, and 
you with him! — and you with him!" 

"And yet, my Lord," said Mr. Archer, "these 
good people will have as keen a sense of loss as you 
or I; keener, perhaps, since they have done noth- 
ing to deserve it." 

"Deserve it?" cried the peer. "What? What? 
If a rascally highwayman comes up to me with a 
confounded pistol, do you say that I've deserved it? 
How often am I to tell you, sir, that I was cheated — 
that I was cheated?" 

"You are happy in the belief," returned Mr. 
Archer, gravely. 

"Archer, you would be the death of me!" ex- 
claimed his Lordship. "You know you're drunk; 
you know it, sir; and yet you can't get up a spark of 
animation." 

"I have drunk fair, my Lord," replied the younger 
man; "but I own I am conscious of no exhilaration." 

"If you had as black a look-out as me, sir," cried 
the peer, "you would be very glad of a little innocent 
exhilaration, let me tell you. I am glad of it — glad 
of it, and I only wish I was drunker. For let me 
tell you it 's a cruel hard thing upon a man of my 
time of life and my position, to be brought down to 
beggary because the world is full of thieves and ras- 
cals — thieves and rascals. What? For all I know, 



NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 215 

you may be a thief and a rascal yourself; and I 
would fight you for a pinch of snuff — a pinch of 
snuff," exclaimed his Lordship. 

Here Mr. Archer turned to Nance Holdaway with 
a pleasant smile, so full of sweetness, kindness, and 
composure that, at one bound, her dreams returned 
to her. 

"My good Miss Holdaway," said he, "if you are 
willing to show me the road, I am eager to be gone. 
As for his Lordship and myself, compose yourself; 
there is no fear; this is his Lordship's way." 

"What? What?" cried his Lordship. "My 
way? Ish no such a thing, my way." 

"Come, my Lord," cried Archer; "you and I 
very thoroughly understand each other; and let me 
suggest, it is time that both of us were gone. The 
mail will soon be due. Here, then, my Lord, I take 
my leave of you, with the most earnest assurance of 
my gratitude for the past, and a sincere offer of any 
services I may be able to render in the future." 

"Archer," exclaimed Lord Windermoor, "I love 
you like a son. Le' 's have another bowl." 

"My Lord, for both our sakes, you will excuse 
me," replied Mr. Archer. "We both require cau- 
tion; we must both, for some while at least, avoid 
the chance of a pursuit. " 

"Archer," quoth his Lordship, "this is a rank in- 
gratishood. What ? I 'm to go firing away in the 
dark in the cold po'-chaise, and not so much as a 
game of ecarte possible, unless I stop and play with 
the postilion — the postilion; and the whole country 
swarming with thieves and rascals and highwaymen." 



2i6 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

"I beg your Lordship's pardon," put in the land> 
lord, who now appeared in the doorway to announce 
the chaise, "but this part of the North Road is 
known for safety. There has not been a robbery, to 
call a robbery, this five years' time. Farther south, 
of course, it 's nearer London, and another story," 
he added. 

"Well, then, if that's so," concluded my Lord, 
"le' 's have t' other bowl and a pack of cards." 

"My Lord, you forget," said Archer, "I might still 
gain, but it is hardly possible for me to lose." 

"Think I 'm a sharper?" inquired the peer. 
"Gen'leman's parole 's all I ask." 

But Mr. Archer was proof against these blandish- 
ments, and said farewell gravely enough to Lord 
Windermoor, shaking his hand and at the same 
time bowing very low. "You will never know," 
said he, "the service you have done me." And 
with that, and before my Lord had finally taken up 
his meaning, he had slipped about the table, touched 
Nance lightly but imperiously on the arm, and left 
the room. In face of the outbreak of his Lord- 
ship's lamentations, she made haste to follow the 
truant. 

II 

IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 

The chaise had been driven around to the front 
door; the court-yard lay all deserted, and only lit 
by a lantern set upon a window-sill. Through this 



MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 217 

Nance rapidly led the way, and began to ascend the 
swellings of the moor with a heart that somewhat 
fluttered in her bosom. She was not afraid, but in 
the course of these last passages with Lord Winder- 
moor, Mr. Archer had ascended to that pedestal on 
which her fancy waited to install him. The reaHty, 
she felt, excelled her dreams, and this cold night 
walk was the first romantic incident in her experience. 

It was the rule in those days to see gentlemen un- 
steady after dinner, yet Nance was both surprised 
and amused when her companion, who had spoken 
so soberly, began to stumble and waver by her side 
with the most airy divagations. Sometimes he 
would get so close to her that she must edge away; 
and at others lurch clear out of the track and plough 
among deep heather. His courtesy and gravity 
meanwhile remained unaltered. He asked her how 
far they had to go; whether the way lay all upon the 
moorland, and when he learned they had to pass 
a wood expressed his pleasure. "For," said he, 
"I am passionately fond of trees. Trees and fair 
lawns, if you consider of it rightly, are the ornaments 
of nature, as palaces and fine approaches — " And 
here he stumbled into a patch of slough and nearly 
fell. The girl had hard work not to laugh, but at 
heart she was lost in admiration for one who talked 
so elegantly. 

They had got to about a quarter of a mile from 
the Green Dragon, and were near the summit of the 
rise, when a sudden rush of wheels arrested them. 
Turning and looking back, they saw the post-house, 
now much declined in brightness; and speeding 



2i8 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

away northward the two tremulous bright dots of 
my lord Windermoor's chaise-lamps. Mr. Archer 
followed these yellow and unsteady stars until they 
dwindled into points and disappeared. 

"There goes my only friend," he said. "Death 
has cut off those that loved me, and change of for- 
tune estranged my flatterers; and but for you, poor 
bankrupt, my life is as lonely as this moor." 

The tone of his voice affected both of them. They 
stood there on the side of the moor, and became thril- 
lingly conscious of the void waste of the night, with- 
out a feature for the eye, and except for the fainting 
whisper of the carriage-wheels without a murmur 
for the ear. And instantly, like a mockery, there 
broke out, very far away, but clear and jolly, the 
note of the mail-guard's horn. " Over the hills," was 
his air. It rose to the two watchers on the moor 
with the most cheerful sentiment of human com- 
pany and travel, and at the same time in and around 
the Green Dragon it woke up a great bustle of lights 
running to and fro and clattering hoofs. Presently 
after, out of the darkness to southward, the mail 
drew near with a growing rumble. Its lamps were 
very large and bright, and threw their radiance 
forward in overlapping cones; the four cantering 
horses swarmed and steamed; the body of the coach 
followed like a great shadow; and this Ht picture 
slid with a sort of ineffectual swiftness over the black 
field of night, and was eclipsed by the buildings of 
the Green Dragon. 

Mr. Archer turned abruptly and resumed his 
former walk; only that he was now more steady, 



MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 219 

kept better alongside his young conductor, and had 
fallen into a silence broken by sighs. Nance waxed 
very pitiful over his fate, contrasting an imaginary 
past of courts and great society, and perhaps the 
King himself, with the tumbledown ruin in a wood 
to which she was now conducting him. 

"You must try, sir, to keep your spirits up," said 
she. " To be sure, this is a great change for one like 
you; but who knows the future?" 

Mr. Archer turned towards her in the darkness, 
and she could clearly perceive that he smiled upon 
her very kindly. "There spoke a sweet nature," 
said he, "and I must thank you for these words. 
But I would not have you fancy that I regret the past 
for any happiness found in it, or that I fear the sim- 
plicity and hardship of the country. I am a man 
that has been much tossed about in life; now up, 
now down; and do you think that I shall not be able 
to support what you support — you who are kind, 
and therefore know how to feel pain; who are beau- 
tiful, and therefore hope; who are young, and there- 
fore (or am I the more mistaken?) discontented?" 

"Nay, sir, not that at least," said Nance; "not 
discontented. If I were to be discontented, how 
should I look those that have real sorrows in the 
face? I have faults enough, but not that fault; 
and I have my merits too, for I have a good opinion 
of myself. But for beauty, I am not so simple but 
that I can tell a banter from a compliment." 

"Nay, nay," said Mr. Archer, "I had half for- 
gotten; grief is selfish, and I was thinking of my- 
self and not of you, or I had never blurted out so 



220 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

bold a piece of praise. 'T is the best proof of my 
sincerity. But come, now, I would lay a wager you 
are no coward?" 

"Indeed, sir, I am not more afraid than another," 
said Nance. "None of my blood are given to fear." 

"And you are honest?" he returned. 

"I will answer for that," said she. 

"Well, then, to be brave, to be honest, to be kind, 
and to be contented, since you say you are so — is not 
that to fill up a great part of virtue?" 

"I fear you are but a flatterer," said Nance, but 
she did not say it clearly, for what with bewilderment 
and satisfaction, her heart was quite oppressed. 

There could be no harm, certainly, in these grave 
compliments; but yet they charmed and frightened 
her, and to find favour, for reasons however obscure, 
in the eyes of this elegant, serious, and most unfortu- 
nate young gentleman, was a giddy elevation, was 
almost an apotheosis, for a country maid. 

But she was to be no more exercised; for Mr. 
Archer, disclaiming any thought of flattery, turned 
off to other subjects, and held her all through the 
wood in conversation, addressing her with an air 
of perfect sincerity, and listening to her answers with 
every mark of interest. Had open flattery continued, 
Nance would have soon found refuge in good sense; 
but the more subtle lure she could not suspect, much 
less avoid. It was the first time she had ever taken 
part in a conversation iUuminated by any ideas. All 
was then true that she had heard and dreamed 
of gentlemen: they were a race apart, like deities 
knowing good and evil. And then there burst upon 



MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 221 

her soul a divine thought, hope's glorious sunrise: 
since she could understand, since it seemed that she 
too, even she, could interest this sorrowful Apollo, 
might she not learn? Or was she not learning? 
Would not her soul awake and put forth wings? 
Was she not, in fact, an enchanted princess, waiting 
but a touch to become royal? She saw herself 
transformed, radiantly attired, but in the most ex- 
quisite taste: her face grown longer and more re- 
fined; her tint etherealised; and she heard herself 
with delighted wonder talking like a book. 

Meanwhile they had arrived at where the track 
comes out above the river dell, and saw in front of 
them the castle, faintly shadowed on the night, 
covering with its broken battlements a bold pro- 
jection of the bank, and showing at the extreme 
end, where were the habitable tower and wing, 
some crevices of candle-light. Hence she called 
loudly upon her uncle, and he was seen to issue, 
lantern in hand, from the tower door, and, where 
the ruins did not intervene, to pick his way over 
the swarded 'court-yard, avoiding treacherous cellars 
and winding among blocks of fallen masonry. The 
arch of the great gate was still entire, flanked by 
two tottering bastions, and it was here that Jona- 
than met them, standing at the edge of the bridge, 
bent somewhat forward, and blinking at them 
through the glow of his own lantern. Mr. Archer 
greeted him with civihty; but the old man was in 
no humour of compliance. He guided the new- 
comer across the court-yard, looking sharply and 
quickly in his face, and grumbling all the time about 



222 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

the cold, and the discomfort and dilapidation of 
the castle. 

He was sure he hoped that Mr. Archer would like 
it; but in truth he could not think what brought 
him there. Doubtless he had a good reason — this 
with a look of cunning scrutiny — but, indeed, the 
place was quite unfit for any person of repute; he 
himself was eaten up with the rheumatics. It was 
the most rheumaticky place in England, and, some 
fine day, the whole habitable part (to call it habita- 
ble) would fetch away bodily and go down the slope 
into the river. He had seen the cracks widening; 
there was a plaguy issue in the bank below; he 
thought a spring was mining it; it might be to-mor- 
row, it might be next day; but they were all sure of 
a come-down sooner or later. "And that is a poor 
death," said he, "for any one, let alone a gentleman, 
to have a whole old ruin dumped upon his belly. 
Have a care to your left there: these cellar vaults 
have all broke down, and the grass and the hemlock 
hide 'em. Well, sir, here is welcome to you, such 
as it is, and wishing you well away." 

And with that Jonathan ushered his guest through 
the tower door, and down three steps on the left 
hand into the kitchen or common room of the castle. 
It was a huge, low room, as large as a meadow, 
occupying the whole width of the habitable wing, 
with six barred windows looking on the court, and 
two into the river valley. A dresser, a table, and 
a few chairs stood dotted here and there upon the 
uneven flags. Under the great chimney a good fire 
burned in an iron fire-basket; a high old settee, rudely 



MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 223 

carved with figures and Gothic lettering, flanked it 
on either side; there were a hinge table and a stone 
bench in the chimney corner, and above the arch 
hung guns, axes, lanterns, and great sheaves of rusty 
keys. 

Jonathan looked about him, holding up the lan- 
tern, and shrugged his shoulders with a pitying grim- 
ace. ''Here it is," he said. "See the damp on the 
floor, look at the moss; where there 's moss you 
may be sure that it 's rheumaticky. Try and get 
near that fire for to warm yourself; it '11 blow the 
coat off your back. And with a young gentleman 
with a face like yours, as pale as a tallow candle, 
I 'd be afeared of a churchyard cough and a gal- 
loping decline," said Jonathan, naming the mala- 
dies with gloomy gusto, "or the cold might strike 
and turn your blood," he added. 

Mr. Archer fairly laughed. " My good Mr. Hold- 
away," said he, "I was born with that same tallow- 
candle face, and the only fear that you inspire me 
with is the ' fear that I intrude unwelcomely upon 
your private hours. But I think I can promise 
you that I am very little troublesome, and I am 
inclined to hope that the terms which I can offer 
may still pay you the derangement." 

"Yes, the terms," said Jonathan, "I was think- 
ing of that. As you say, they are very small," and 
he shook his head. 

"Unhappily, I can afford no more," said Mr. 
Archer. "But this we have arranged already," he 
added with a certain stiffness; "and as I am aware 
that Miss Holdaway has matter to communicate, 1 



224 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

will, if you permit, retire at once. To-night I must 
bivouac; to-morrow my trunk is to follow from the 
Dragon. So, if you will show me to my room I 
shall wish you a good slumber and a better awaken- 
ing." 

Jonathan silently gave the lantern to Nance, and 
she, turning and courtesying in the doorway, pro- 
ceeded to conduct their guest up the broad winding 
staircase of the tower. He followed with a very 
brooding face. 

"Alas!" cried Nance, as she entered the room, 
"your fire is black out," and setting down the lan- 
tern she clapped upon her knees before the chimney 
and began to rearrange the charred and still smoul- 
dering remains. Mr. Archer looked about the gaunt 
apartment with a sort of shudder. The great height, 
the bare stone, the shattered windows, the aspect of 
the uncurtained bed, with one of its four fluted 
columns broken short, all struck a chill upon his 
fancy. From this dismal survey his eyes turned to 
Nance crouching before the fire, the candle in one 
hand and artfully puffing at the embers; the flames 
as they broke forth played upon the soft outline of 
her cheek — she was alive and young, coloured with 
the bright hues of life, and a woman. He looked 
upon her, softening; and then sat down and con- 
tinued to admire the picture. 

"There, sir," said she, getting upon her feet, 
"your fire is doing bravely now. Good-night." 

He rose and held out his hand. "Come," said 
he, "you are my only friend in these parts, and you 
must shake hands." 



MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 225 

She brushed her hand upon her skirt, and offered 
it, blushing. 

" God bless you, my dear," said he. 

And then, when he was alone, he opened one of 
the windows, and stared down into the dark valley. 
A gentle wimpling of the river among stones ascended 
to his ear; the trees upon the other bank stood very 
black against the sky; farther away an owl was 
hooting. It was dreary and cold, and as he turned 
back to the' hearth and the fine glow of fire, "Heav- 
ens!" said he to himself, "what an unfortunate 
destiny is mine!" 

He went to bed, but sleep only visited his pillow 
in uneasy snatches. Outbreaks of loud speech came 
up the staircase; he heard the old stones of the 
castle crack in the frosty night with sharp reverber- 
ations, and the bed complained under his tossings. 
Lastly, far on into the morning, he awakened from 
a doze to hear, very far off, in the extreme and 
breathless quiet, a wailing flourish on the horn. 
The down" mail was drawing near to the Green 
Dragon. He sat up in bed; the sound was tragical 
by distance, and the modulation appealed to his ear 
like human speech. It seemed to call upon him 
with a dreary insistence — to call him far away, to 
address him personally, and to have a meaning that 
he failed to seize. It was thus, at least, in this nod- 
ding castle, in a cold, miry woodland, and so far 
from men and society, that the traffic on the Great 
North Road spoke to him in the intervals of slumber. 



226 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

III 

JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 

Nance descended the tower-stair, pausing at 
every step. She was in no hurry to confront her 
uncle with bad news, and she must dwell a little 
longer on the rich note of Mr. Archer's voice, the 
charm of his kind words, and the beauty of his 
manner and person. But, once at the stair-foot, she 
threw aside the spell and recovered her sensible and 
workaday self. 

Jonathan was seated in the middle of the settle, a 
mug of ale beside him, in the attitude of one prepared 
for trouble; but he did not speak, and suffered her 
to fetch her supper and eat of it, with a very excellent 
appetite, in silence. When she had done, she, too, 
drew a tankard of home-brewed, and came and 
planted herself in front of him upon the settle. 

"Well?" said Jonathan. 

"My Lord has run away," said Nance. 

"What?" cried the old man. 

"Abroad," she continued. "Run away from 
creditors. He said he had not a stiver, but he was 
drunk enough. He said you might live on in the 
castle, and Mr. Archer would pay you; but you was 
to look for no more wages, since he w^ould be glad of 
them himself." 

Jonathan's face contracted; the flush of a black, 
bilious anger mounted to the roots of his hair; he 



JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 227 

gave an inarticulate cry, leapt upon his feet, and 
began rapidly pacing the stone floor. At first he 
kept his hands behind his back in a tight knot; then 
he began to gesticulate as he turned. 

"This man — this Lord," he shouted, "who is he? 
He was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, and I 
with a dirty straw. He rolled in his coach when he 
was a baby. I have dug and toiled and laboured 
since I was that high — that high." And he shouted 
again, "I'm bent and broke, and full of pains. 
D' ye think I don't know the taste of sweat ? Many 's 
the gaUon I 've drunk of it — ay, in the midwinter, 
toiling like a slave. All through, what has my life 
been? Bend, bend, bend my old creaking back till 
it would ache like breaking; wade about in the 
foul mire, never a dry stitch; empty belly, sore 
hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; kicks and 
ha'pence; and now, here, at the hind end, when 
I 'm worn to my poor bones, a kick and done with 
it." He walked a little while in silence, and then, 
extending Jiis hand, "Now, you Nance Holdaway," 
said he, "you come of my blood, and you 're a good 
girl. When that man was a boy, I used to carry 
his gun for him. I carried the gun all day on my 
two feet, and many a stitch I had, and chewed a 
bullet for. He rode upon a horse, with feathers 
in his hat, but it was him that had the shots and 
took the game home. Did I complain? Not I. I 
knew my station. What did I ask, but just the 
chance to live and die honest? Nance Holdaway, 
don't let them deny it to me — don't let them do it. 
I 've been poor as Job, and honest as the day, but 



228 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

now, my girl, you mark these words of mine, I *m 
getting tired of it." 

*T wouldn't say such words, at least," said Nance. 

"You wouldn't?" said the old man, grimly. 
"Well, and did I when I was your age? Wait till 
your back 's broke, and your hands tremble, and 
your eyes fail, and you 're weary of the battle, and 
ask no more but to lie down in your bed, and give 
the ghost up like an honest man; and then let there 
up and come some insolent, ungodly fellow — ah! if 
I had him in these hands! ' Where 's my money that 
you gambled?' I should say. 'Where's my money 
that you drank and diced? Thief!' is what I would 
say; thief!" he roared, "thief!" 

" Mr. Archer will hear you, if you don't take care," 
said Nance; ''and I would be ashamed, for one, that 
he should hear a brave, old, honest, hard-working 
man like Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a 
boy." 

"D' ye think I mind for Mr. Archer?" he cried 
shrilly, with a clack of laughter; and then he came 
close up to her, stooped down with his two palms 
upon his knees, and looked her in the eyes, with a 
strange hard expression, something like a smile. 
"Do I mind for God, my girl?" he said, "that's 
what it 's come to be now, do I mind for God?" 

"Uncle Jonathan," she said, getting up and ta- 
king him by the arm; "you sit down again, where 
you were sitting. There, sit still; I '11 have no 
more of this; you '11 do yourself a mischief. Come, 
take a drink of this good ale, and I '11 warm a tan- 
kard for you. La, well; we '11 pull through, you 'U 



JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 229 

see. I 'm young, as you say, and it 's my turn to 
carry the bundle; and don't you worry your bile, 
or we '11 have sickness, too, as well as sorrow." 

"D' ye think that I 'd forgotten you?" said Jona- 
than, with something like a groan; and thereupon 
his teeth clicked to, and he sat silent with the tank- 
ard in his hand and staring straight before him. 

''Why," says Nance, setting on the ale to mull," 
"men are always children, they say, however old; 
and if ever I heard a thing like this, to set to and 
make yourself sick, just when the money 's failing! 
Keep a good heart up; you haven't kept a good 
heart these seventy years, nigh hand, to break down 
about a pound or two. Here 's this Mr. Archer 
come to lodge, that you disliked so much. Well, 
now you see it was a clear Providence. Come, let 's 
think upon our mercies. And here is the ale mull- 
ing lovely; smell of it; I '11 take a drop myself, 
it smells so sweet. And, Uncle Jonathan, you let 
me say one word. You 've lost more than money 
before now; you lost my aunt, and bore it like a 
man. Bear this." 

His face once more contracted; his fist doubled, 
and shot forth into the air, and trembled. "Let 
them look out!" he shouted. "Here, I warn all 
men; I 've done with this foul kennel of knaves. 
Let them look out." 

"Hush, hush! for pity's sake," cried Nance. 

And then all of a sudden he dropped his face into 
his hands, and broke out with a great hiccoughing 
dry sob that was horrible to hear. "O," he cried, 
"my God, if my son hadn't left me, if my Dick 



230 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

was here!" and the sobs shook him; Nance sitting 
still and watching him, with distress. "O, if he 
were here to help his father!" he went on again. 
" If I had a son like other fathers, he would save 
me now, when all is breaking down; O, he would 
save me! Ay, but where is he? Raking taverns, 
a thief perhaps. My curse be on him!" he added, 
rising again into wrath. 

"Hush!" cried Nance, springing to her feet: 
"your boy, your dead wife's boy — Aunt Susan's 
baby, that she loved — would you curse him? O, 
God forbid!" 

The energy of her address surprised him from his 
mood. He looked upon her, tearless and confused. 
"Let me go to my bed," he said at last, and he rose 
and, shaking as with ague, but quite silent, lighted 
his candle, and left the kitchen. 

Poor Nance! the pleasant current of her dreams 
was all diverted. She beheld a golden city, where 
she aspired to dwell; she had spoken with a deity, 
and had told herself that she might rise to be his 
equal; and now the earthly ligaments that bound 
her down had been straitened. She was like a 
tree looking skyward, her roots were in the ground. 
It seemed to her a thing so coarse, so rustic, to be 
thus concerned about a loss in money; when Mr. 
Archer, fallen from the sky-level of counts and 
nobles, faced his changed destiny with so immovable 
a courage. To weary of honesty; that, at least, no 
one could do, but even to name it was already a dis- 
grace; and she beheld in fancy her uncle, and the 
young lad, all laced and feathered, hand upon hip, 



MINGLING THREADS 231 

bestriding his small horse. The opposition seemed 
to perpetuate itself from generation to generation; 
one side still doomed to the clumsy and servile, the 
other born to beauty. 

She thought of the golden zones in which gentle- 
men were bred, and figured with so excellent a grace; 
zones in which wisdom and smooth words, white 
linen and slim hands, were the mark of the desired 
inhabitants; where low temptations were unknown, 
and honesty no virtue, but a thing as natural as 
breathing. 

IV 

MINGLING THREADS 

It was nearly seven before Mr. Archer left his 
apartment. On the landing he found another door 
beside his own, opening on a roofless corridor, and 
presently he was walking on the top of the ruins. 
On one hand he could look down a good depth into 
the green court-yard; on the other, his eye roved 
along the downward course of the river, the wet woods 
all smoking, the shadows long and blue, the mists 
golden and rosy in the sun, here and there the water 
flashing across an obstacle. His heart expanded 
and softened to a grateful melancholy, and with his 
eye fixed upon the distance, and no thought of present 
danger, he continued to stroll along the elevated 
and treacherous promenade. 

A terror-stricken cry rose to him from the court- 
yard. He looked down, and saw in a glimpse 
Nance standing below with hands clasped in horror 



232 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

and his own foot trembling on the margin of a gulf. 
He recoiled and leant against a pillar, quaking from 
head to foot, and covering his face with his hands; 
and Nance had time to run round by the stair and 
rejoin him where he stood before he had changed 
a line of his position. 

''Ah!" he cried, and clutched her wrist; "don't 
leave me. The place rocks; I have no head for 
altitudes." 

" Sit down against that pillar," said Nance. " Don't 
you be afraid; I won't leave you; and don't look up 
or down; look straight at me. How white you 
are!" 

" The gulf," he said, and closed his eyes again and 
shuddered. 

"Why," said Nance, "what a poor climber you 
must be! That was where my cousin Dick used to 
get out of the castle after Uncle Jonathan had shut 
the gate. I 've been down there myself with him 
helping me. I wouldn't try with you," she said, 
and laughed merrily. 

The sound of her laughter was sincere and musi- 
cal, and perhaps its beauty barbed the offence to 
Mr. Archer. The blood came into his face with a 
quick jet, and then left it paler than before. " It is 
a physical weakness," he said harshly, "and very 
droll, no doubt, but one that I can conquer on neces- 
sity. See, I am still shaking. Well, I advance to 
the battlements and look down. Show me your 
cousin's path." 

"He would go sure-foot along that little ledge," 
said Nance, pointing as she spoke; " then out through 



MINGLING THREADS 233 

the breach and down by yonder buttress. It is 
easier coming back, of course, because you see where 
you are going. From the buttress-foot a sheep- 
walk goes along the scarp — see, you can follow it 
from here in the dry grass. And now, sir," she 
added, with a touch of womanly pity, "I would 
come away from here if I were you, for indeed you 
are not fit." 

Sure enough, Mr. Archer's pallor and agitation 
had continued to increase; his cheeks were deathly, 
his clenched fingers trembled pitifully. " The weak- 
ness is physical," he sighed, and had nearly fallen. 
Nance led him from the spot, and he was no sooner 
back in the tower-stair, than he fell heavily against 
the wall and put his arm across his eyes. A cup 
of brandy had to be brought him before he could 
descend to breakfast; and the perfection of Nance's 
dream was for the first time troubled. 

Jonathan was waiting for them at table, with 
yellow, blood-shot eyes and a peculiar dusky com- 
plexion. He hardly waited till they found their 
seats, before, raising one hand, and stooping with 
his mouth above his plate, he put up a prayer for a 
blessing on the food and a spirit of gratitude in the 
eaters, and thereupon, and without more civility, 
fell to. But it was notable that he was no less 
speedily satisfied than he had been greedy to begin. 
He pushed his plate away and drummed upon the 
table. 

"These are silly prayers," said he, "that they 
teach us. Eat and be thankful, that 's no such won- 
der. Speak to me of starving — there 's the touch. 



234 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

You 're a man, they tell me, Mr. Archer, that has 
met with some reverses?" 

"I have met with many," replied Mr. Archer. 

"Ha!" said Jonathan, "none reckons but the last. 
Now, see; I tried to make this girl here understand 
me." 

"Uncle," said Nance, "what should Mr. Archer 
care for your concerns? He hath troubles of his 
own, and came to be at peace, I think." 

"I tried to make her understand me," repeated 
Jonathan, doggedly; "and now I'll try you. Do 
you think this world is fair?" 

"Fair and false!" quoth Mr. Archer. 

The old man laughed immoderately. "Good," 
said he; "very good. But what I mean is this: do 
you know what it is to get up early and go to bed 
late, and never take so much as a holiday but four; 
and one of these your own marriage day, and the 
other three the funerals of folk you loved, and all 
that, to have a quiet old age in shelter, and bread for 
your old belly, and a bed to lay your crazy bones 
upon, with a clear conscience?" 

"Sir," said Mr. Archer, with an incHnation of his 
head, "you portray a very brave existence." 

"Well," continued Jonathan, "and in the end 
thieves deceive you, thieves rob and rook you, thieves 
turn you out in your grey old age and send you beg- 
ging. What have you got for all your honesty? 
A fine return! You that might have stole scores of 
pounds, there you are out in the rain with your 
rheumatics!" 

Mr. Archer had forgotten to eat; with his hand 



MINGLING THREADS 235 

upon his chin he was studying the old man's counte- 
nance. '' And you conclude ? " he asked. 

"Conclude!" cried Jonathan. "I conclude I'll 
be upsides with them." 

"Ay," said the other, "we are all tempted to re- 
venge." 

"You have lost money?" asked Jonathan. 

"A great estate," said Archer, quietly. 

"See now!" says Jonathan, "and where is it?" 

"Nay, I sometimes think that every one has had 
his share of it but me," was the reply. " All England 
hath paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was a sheep 
that left my wool on every brier." 

"And you sit down under that?" cried the old 
man. " Come now, Mr. Archer, you and me belong 
to different stations? and I know mine — no man 
better — but since we have both been rooked, and are 
both sore with it, why, here 's my hand with a very 
good heart, and I ask for yours, and no offence, I 
hope." 

"There is surely no offence, my friend," returned 
Mr. Archer, as they shook hands across the table; 
"for, believe me, my sympathies are quite acquired 
to you. This life is an arena where we fight with 
beasts; and, indeed," he added, sighing, "I some- 
times marvel why we go down to it unarmed." 

In the meanwhile, a creaking of ungreased axles 
had been heard descending through the wood; and 
presently after the door opened, and the tall hostler 
entered the kitchen carrying one end of Mr. Archer's 
trunks. The other was carried by an aged beggar- 
man of that district, known and welcome for some 



236 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

twenty miles about under the name of Old Cumber- 
land. Each was soon perched upon a settle, with 
a cup of ale; and the hostler, who valued himself 
upon his affability, began to entertain the company, 
still with half an eye on Nance, to whom in gallant 
terms he expressly dedicated every sip of ale. First 
he told of the trouble they had to get his Lordship 
started in the chaise; and how he had dropped a 
rouleau of gold on the threshold, and the passage 
and door-step had been strewn with guinea-pieces. 
At this old Jonathan looked at Mr. Archer. Next 
the visitor turned to news of a more thrilling char- 
acter: how the down mail had been stopped again 
near Grantham by three men on horseback — a white 
and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on their 
faces; how Tom the guard's blunderbuss missed 
fire, but he swore he had winged one of them with a 
pistol; and how they had got clean away with sev- 
enty pounds in money, some valuable papers, and a 
watch or two. 

*' Brave, brave!" cried Jonathan, in ecstasy. 
"Seventy pounds! O, it 's brave!" 

"Well, I don't see the great bravery," observed 
the hostler, misapprehending him. "Three men, 
and you may call that three to one. I '11 call it brave 
when some one stops the mail single-handed; that 's 
a risk." 

"And why should they hesitate?" inquired Mr. 
Archer. "The poor souls who are fallen to such a 
way of life, pray, what have they to lose? If they 
get the money, well; but if a ball should put them 
from their troubles, why, so better." 



MINGLING THREADS 237 

''Well, sir," said the hostler, "I believe you '11 find 
they won't agree with you. They count on a good 
fling, you see; or who would risk it? — And here's 
my best respects to you. Miss Nance." 

"And I forgot the part of cowardice," resumed 
Mr. Archer. "All men fear." 

"O, surely not!" cried Nance. 

"All men," reiterated Mr. Archer. 

"Ay, that 's a true word," observed Old Cumber- 
land, "and a thief, anyway, for it's a coward's 
trade." 

" But these fellows, now," said Jonathan, with a 
curious, appealing manner — " these fellows with their 
seventy pounds! Perhaps, Mr. Archer, they were 
no true thieves after all, but just people who had 
been robbed and tried to get their own again. What 
was that you said, about all England and the taxes ? 
One takes, another gives; why, that 's almost fair. 
If I 've been rooked and robbed, and the coat taken 
off my back, I call it almost fair to take another's." 

"Ask Old Cumberland," observed the hostler, 
"you ask Old Cumberland, Miss Nance!" and he 
bestowed a wink upon his favoured fair one. 

"Why that?" asked Jonathan. 

"He had his coat taken, ay, and his shirt too,'' re- 
turned the hostler. 

"Is that so?" cried Jonathan, eagerly. "Was 
you robbed too?" 

"That was I," replied Cumberland, "with a war- 
rant! I was a well-to-do man when I was young." 

"Ay! See that!" says Jonathan. "And you 
don't long for a revenge?" 



238 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

"Eh! Not me!" answered the beggar. "It's 
too long ago. But if you '11 give me another mug of 
your good ale, my pretty lady, I won't say no to 
that." 

"And shalt have! And shalt have!" cried Jona- 
than; "or brandy even, if you like it better." 

And as Cumberland did like it better, and the 
hostler chimed in, the party pledged each other in a 
dram of brandy before separating. 

As for Nance, she slipped forth into the ruins, 
partly to avoid the hostler's gallantries, partly to 
lament over the defects of Mr. Archer. Plainly, he 
was no hero. She pitied him; she began to feel a 
protecting interest mingle with and almost supersede 
her admiration, and was at the same time disap- 
pointed and yet drawn to him. She was, indeed, 
conscious of such unshaken fortitude in her own 
heart, that she was almost tempted by an occasion 
to be bold for two. She saw herself, in a brave atti- 
tude, shielding her imperfect hero from the world; 
and she saw, like a piece of Heaven, his gratitude for 
her protection. 

V 

LIFE IN THE CASTLE ^ 

From that day forth the life of these three persons 
in the ruins ran very smoothly. Mr. Archer now 
sat by the fire with a book, and now passed whole 
days abroad, returning late, dead weary. His man- 
ner was a mask; but it was half transparent; through 



LIFE IN THE CASTLE 239 

the even tenor of his gravity and courtesy profound 
revolutions of feeling were betrayed, seasons of numb 
despair, of restlessness, of aching temper. For days 
he would say nothing beyond his usual courtesies 
and solemn compliments; and then, all of a sudden, 
some fine evening beside the kitchen fire, he would 
fall into a vein of elegant gossip, tell of strange and 
interesting events, the secrets of families, brave 
deeds of war, the miraculous discovery of crime, the 
visitations of the dead. Nance and her uncle would 
sit till the small hours with eyes wide open: Jona- 
than applauding the unexpected incidents with 
many a slap of his big hand; Nance, perhaps, more 
pleased with the narrator's eloquence and wise re- 
flections. And then, again, days would follow of 
abstraction, of listless humming, of frequent apol- 
ogies and long hours of silence. Once only, and then 
after a week of unrelieved melancholy, he went over 
to the Green Dragon, spent the afternoon with the 
landlord and a bowl of punch, and returned as on 
the first night, devious in step, but courteous and un- 
perturbed of speech. 

If he seemed more natural and more at his ease, 
it was when he found Nance alone; and laying by 
some of his reserve, talked before her rather than to 
her of his destiny, character, and hopes. To Nance 
these interviews were but a doubtful privilege. At 
times he would seem to take a pleasure in her pres- 
ence, to consult her gravely, to hear and discuss her 
counsels; at times even, but these were rare and 
brief, he would talk of herself, praise the qualities 
that she possessed, touch indulgently on her defects, 



240 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

and lend her books to read and even examine her 
upon her reading; but far more often he would fall 
into a half-unconsciousness, put her a question and 
then answer it himself, drop into the veiled tone of 
voice of one sohloquising, and leave her at last as 
though he had forgotten her existence. It was odd, 
too, that in all this random converse not a fact of 
his past life, and scarce a name, should ever cross 
his lips. A profound reserve kept watch upon his 
most unguarded moments. He spoke continually 
of himself, indeed, but still in enigmas; the veiled 
prophet of egoism. 

The base of Nance's feelings for Mr. Archer was 
admiration as for a superior being; and with this, 
his treatment, consciously or not, accorded happily. 
When he forgot her, she took the blame upon herself. 
His formal politeness was so exquisite that this essen- 
tial brutality stood excused. His compliments, be- 
sides, were always grave and rational; he would 
offer reason for his praise, convict her of merit, and 
thus disarm suspicion. Nay, and the very hours 
when he forgot and remembered her alternately 
could by the ardent fallacies of youth be read in the 
light of an attention. She might be far from his 
confidence; but still she was nearer it than any one. 
He might ignore her presence, but yet he sought it. 

Moreover, she, upon her side, was conscious of one 
point of superiority. Beside this rather dismal, 
rather effeminate man, who recoiled from 'a worm, 
who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so help- 
lessly the weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself 
a head and shoulders taller in cheerful and sterling 



LIFE IN THE CASTLE 241 

courage. She could walk, head in air, along the 
most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the 
grossness nor the harshness of life's web, but was 
thrust cheerfully, if need were, into the brier bush, 
and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin 
was mining the walls of her cottage, as already it 
had mined and subverted Mr. Archer's palace. 
Well, she faced it with a bright countenance and a 
busy hand. She had got some washing, some rough 
seamstress work from the Green Dragon, and from 
another neighbour ten miles across the moor. At 
this she cheerfully laboured, and from that height 
she could afford to pity the useless talents and poor 
attitude of Mr. Archer. It did not change her ad- 
miration, but it made it bearable. He was above 
her in all ways; but she was above him in one. She 
kept it to herself, and hugged it. When, like all 
young creatures, she made long stories to justify, to 
nourish, and to forecast the course of her affection, 
it was this private superiority that made all rosy, that 
cut the knot, and that, at last, in some great situa- 
tion, fetched to her knees the dazzling but imperfect 
hero. With this pretty exercise she beguiled the 
hours of labour, and consoled herself for Mr. Archer's 
bearing. Pity was her weapon and her weakness. 
To accept the loved one's faults, although it has an 
air of freedom, is to kiss the chain, and this pity it 
was which, lying nearer to her heart, lent the one 
element of true emotion to a fanciful and merely 
brain-sick love. 

Thus it fell out one day that she had gone to the 
Green Dragon and brought back thence a letter to 



242 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

Mr. Archer. He, upon seeing it, winced like a man 
under the knife: pain, shame, sorrow, and the most 
trenchant edge of mortification cut into his heart 
and wrung the steady composure of his face. 

"Dear heart! have you bad news?" she cried. 

But he only replied by a gesture and fled to his 
room, and when, later on, she ventured to refer to 
it, he stopped her on the threshold, as if with words 
prepared beforehand. "There are some pains," 
said he, " too acute for consolation, or I would bring 
them to my kind consoler. Let the memory of that 
letter, if you please, be buried." And then, as she 
continued to gaze at him, being, in spite of herself, 
pained by his elaborate phrase, doubtfully sincere in 
word and matter: "Let it be enough," he added 
haughtily, "that if this matter wring my heart, it 
doth not touch my conscience. I am a man, I 
would have you to know, who suffers undeservedly." 

He had never spoken so directly: never with so 
convincing an emotion; and her heart thrilled for 
him. She could have taken his pains and died of 
them with joy. 

Meanwhile she was left without support. Jona- 
than now swore by his lodger, and lived for him. 
He was a fine talker. He knew the finest sight of 
stories; he was a man and a gentleman, take him 
for all in all, and a perfect credit to Old England. 
Such were the old man's declared sentiments, and 
sure enough he clung to Mr. Archer's side, hung 
upon his utterance when he spoke, and watched him 
with unwearying interest when he was silent. And 
yet his feeling was not clear; in the partial wreck of 



THE BAD HALF-CROWN 243 

his mind, which was leaning to decay, some after- 
thought was strongly present. As he gazed in Mr. 
Archer's face a sudden brightness would kindle in 
his rheumy eyes, his eyebrows would lift as with a 
sudden thought, his mouth would open as though 
to speak, and close again in silence. Once or twice 
he even called Mr. Archer mysteriously forth into 
the dark courtyard, took him by the button, and laid 
a demonstrative finger on his chest; but there his 
ideas or his courage failed him; he would shufflingly 
excuse himself and return to his position by the fire 
without a word of explanation. " The good man was 
growing old," said Mr. Archer, with a suspicion of 
a shrug. But the good man had his idea, and even 
when he was alone the name of Mr. Archer fell from 
his lips continually in the course of mumbled and 
gesticulative conversation. 



VI 

THE BAD HALF-CROWN 

However early Nance arose, and she was no slug- 
gard, the old man, who had begun to outlive the 
earthly habit of slumber, would usually have been 
up long before, the fire would be burning brightly, 
and she would see him wandering among the ruins, 
lantern in hand, and talking assiduously to himself. 
One day, however, after he had returned late from 
the market-town, she found that she had stolen 
a march upon that indefatigable early riser. The 



244 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

kitchen was all blackness. She crossed the castle 
yard to the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick 
hoar-frost. A scathing breeze blew out of the north- 
east and slowly carried a regiment of black and tat- 
tered clouds over the face of Heaven, which was 
already kindled with the wild light of morning, but 
where she walked, in shelter of the ruins, the flame 
of her candle burned steady. The extreme cold 
smote upon her conscience. She could not bear to 
think this bitter business fell usually to the lot of one 
so old as Jonathan, and made desperate resolutions 
to be earlier in the future. 

The fire was a good blaze before he entered, 
limping dismally into the kitchen. "Nance," said 
he, "I be all knotted up with the rheumatics; will 
you rub me a bit?" She came and rubbed him 
where and how he bade her. "This is a cruel thing 
that old age should be rheumaticky," said he. 
"When I was young I stood my turn of the teeth- 
ache like a man! for why? because it couldn't last 
for ever; but these rheumatics come to live and die 
with you. Your aunt was took before the time 
came ; never had an ache to mention. Now I lie all 
night in my single bed and the blood never warms 
in me; this knee of mine it seems like lighted up 
with the rheumatics; it seems as though you could 
see to sew by it; and all the strings of my old body 
ache, as if devils was pulling 'em. Thank you 
kindly; that's someways easier now, but an old 
man, my dear, has little to look for; it 's pain, pain, 
pain to the end of the business, and I '11 never be 
rightly warm again till I get under the sod," he said, 



THE BAD HALF-CROWN 245 

and looked down at her with a face so aged and 
weary that she had nearly wept. 

''I lay awake all night," he continued; "I do so 
mostly, and a long walk kills me. Eh, deary me, to 
think that life should run to such a puddle! And I 
remember long syne when I was strong, and the 
blood all hot and good about me, and I loved to run, 
too — deary me, to run! Well, that's all by. 
You 'd better pray to be took early, Nance, and not 
live on till you get to be like me, and are robbed in 
your grey old age, your cold, shivering, dark old 
age, that 's Hke a winter's morning"; and he bitterly 
shuddered, spreading his hands before the fire. 

"Come now," said Nance, "the more you say the 
less you '11 Hke it. Uncle Jonathan; but if I were 
you I would be proud for to have lived all your days 
honest and beloved, and come near the end with 
your good name: isn't that a fine thing to be proud 
of? Mr. Archer was telling me in some strange 
land they used to run races each with a lighted 
candle, and the art was to keep the candle burning. 
Well, now, I thought that was like life; a man's 
good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if 
he comes to the winning-post with that still burning, 
why, take it how you will, the man's a hero — even 
if he was low-born like you and me." 

"Did Mr. Archer tell you that?" asked Jonathan. 

"No, dear," said she, "that's my own thought 
about it. He told me of the race. But see, now," 
she continued, putting on the porridge, "you say 
old age is a hard season, but so is youth. You 're 
half out of the battle, I would say; you loved my 



246 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

aunt and got her, and buried her, and some of these 
days soon you '11 go to meet her; and take her my 
love and tell her I tried to take good care of you; for 
so I do, Uncle Jonathan." 

Jonathan struck with his fist upon the settle. 
"D' ye think I want to die, ye vixen!" he shouted. 
"I want to hve ten hundred years." 

This was a mystery beyond Nance's penetration, 
and she stared in wonder as she made the porridge. 

"I want to Hve," he continued, "I want to hve 
and to grow rich. I want to drive my carriage and 
to dice in hells and see the ring, I do. Is this a life 
that I lived ? I want to be a rake, d' ye understand ? 
I want to know what things are like. I don't want 
to die like a blind kitten, and me seventy-six." 

"O fie!" said Nance. 

The old man thrust out his jaw at her, with the 
grimace of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that 
aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took 
out of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying 
its contents on the settle, began to count and re- 
count the pieces, ringing and examining each, and 
suddenly he leapt like a young man. "What!" he 
screamed, "Bad? O Lord! I'm robbed again!" 
And falling on his knees before the settle he began 
to pour forth the most dreadful curses on the head 
of his deceiver. His eyes were shut, for to him this 
vile solemnity was prayer. He held up the bad 
half-crown in his right hand, as though he were dis- 
playing it to Heaven, and what increased the horror 
of the scene, the curses he invoked were those whose 
efficacy he had tasted — old age and poverty, rheu- 



THE BAD HALF-CROWN 247 

matism and an ungrateful son. Nance listened ap- 
palled; then she sprang forward and dragged down 
his arm and laid her hand upon his mouth. 

"Whist!" she cried. "Whist ye, for God's sake! 
O my man, whist ye! If Heaven were to hear; if 
poor Aunt Susan were to hear! Think, she may be 
listening." And with the histrionism of strong emo- 
tion she pointed to a corner of the kitchen. 

His eyes followed her finger. He looked there for 
a little, thinking, blinking; then he got stiffly to his 
feet and resumed his place upon the settle, the bad 
piece still in his hand. So he sat for some time, look- 
ing upon the half-crown, and now wondering to 
himself on the injustice and partiality of the law, 
now computing again and again the nature of his 
loss. So he was still sitting when Mr. Archer en- 
tered the kitchen. At this a light came into his face, 
and after some seconds of rumination he despatched 
Nance upon an errand. 

"Mr. Archer," said he, as soon as they were alone 
together, "would you give me a guinea-piece for 
silver?" 

"Why, sir, I believe I can," said Mr. Archer. 

And the exchange was just effected when Nance 
re-entered the apartment. The blood shot into her 
face. "What 's to do here?" she asked rudely. 

"Nothing, my deary," said old Jonathan, with a 
touch of whine. 

"What 's to do?" she said again. 

"Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold," 
returned Mr. Archer. 

"Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer," 



248 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

replied the girl. " I had a bad piece, and I fear it is 
mixed up among the good." 

''Well, well," replied Mr. Archer, smiling, "I 
must take the merchant's risk of it. The money is 
now mixed." 

"I know my piece," quoth Nance. *'Come, let 
me see your silver, Mr. Archer. If I have to get it 
by a theft I '11 see that money," she cried. 

"Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be 
honest as the world to steal, I must give way, though 
I betray myself," said Mr. Archer. "There it is as 
I received it." 

Nance quickly found the bad half-crown. " Give 
him another," she said, looking Jonathan in the 
face; and when that had been done, she walked over 
to the chimney and flung the guilty piece into the 
reddest of the fire. Its base constituents began 
immediately to run; even as she watched it the disc 
crumpled, and the lineaments of the King became 
confused. Jonathan, who had followed close behind, 
beheld these changes from over her shoulder, and 
his face darkened sorely. 

"Now," said she, "come back to table, and to-day 
it is I that shall say grace, as I used to do in the old 
times, day about with Dick"; and covering her eyes 
with one hand, "O Lord," said she, with deep 
emotion, "make us thankful; and, O Lord, deliver 
us from evil! For the love of the poor souls that 
watch for us in Heaven, O deliver us from evil!" 



THE BLEACHING-GREEN 249 



VII 

THE BLEACHING-GREEN 

The year moved on to March; and March, though 
it blew bitter keen from the North Sea, yet bHnked 
kindly betweenwhiles on the river dell. The mire 
dried up in the closest covert; life ran in the bare 
branches, and the air of the afternoon would be sud- 
denly sweet with the fragrance of new grass. 

Above and below the castle the river crooked like 
the letter "S." The lower loop was to the left, and 
embraced the high and steep projection which was 
crowned by the ruins; the upper loop enclosed a 
lawny promontory, fringed by thorn and willow. It 
was easy to reach it from the castle side, for the river 
ran in this part very quietly among innumerable 
boulders and over dam-like walls of rock. The place 
was all enclosed, the wind a stranger, the turf smooth 
and solid^ so it was chosen by Nance to be her 
bleaching-green. 

One day she brought a bucketful of linen, and 
had but begun to wring and lay them out when Mr. 
Archer stepped from the thicket on the far side, 
drew very deliberately near, and sat down in silence 
on the grass. Nance looked up to greet him with 
a smile, but finding her smile was not returned, she 
fell into embarrassment and stuck the more busily 
to her employment. Man or woman, the whole 
world looks well at any work to which they are 
accustomed; but the girl was ashamed of what she 



250 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

did. She was ashamed, besides, of the sun-bonnet 
that so well became her, and ashamed of her bare 
arms, which were her greatest beauty. 

''Nausicaa," said Mr. Archer, at last, "I find you 
like Nausicaa." 

"And who was she?" asked Nance, and laughed 
in spite of herself, an empty and embarrassed laugh, 
that sounded in Mr. Archer's ears, indeed, like 
music, but to her own like the last grossness of 
rusticity. 

"She was a princess of the Grecian islands," he 
replied. "A king, being shipwrecked, found her 
washing by the shore. Certainly I, too, was ship- 
wrecked," he continued, plucking at the grass. 
" There was never a more desperate castaway — to 
fall from polite life, fortune, a shrine of honour, a 
grateful conscience, duties willingly taken up and 
faithfully discharged; and to fall to this — idleness, 
poverty, inutihty, remorse." He seemed to have 
forgotten her presence, but here he remembered her 
again. "Nance," said he, "would you have a man 
sit down and suffer or rise up and strive?" 

"Nay," she said. "I would always rather see 
him doing." 

"Ha!" said Mr. Archer, "but yet you speak from 
an imperfect knowledge. Conceive a man damned 
to a choice of only evil — misconduct upon either 
side, not a fault behind him, and yet naught for him 
but this choice of sins. How would you say then?" 

"I would say that he was much deceived, Mr. 
Archer," returned Nance. "I would say there was a 
third choice, and that the right one." 



THE BLEACHING-GREEN 251 

"I tell you," said Mr. Archer, "the man I have in 
view hath two ways open, and no more. One to 
wait, like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save or 
ruin him; the other to take his troubles in his hand, 
and to perish or be saved at once. It is no point of 
morals; both are wrong. Either way this step-child 
of Providence must fall; which shall he choose, by 
doing, or not doing?" 

"Fall, then, is what I would say," rephed Nance. 
"Fall where you will, but do it! For O, Mr. 
Archer," she continued, stooping to her work, "you 
that are good and kind, and so wise, it doth some- 
times go against my heart to see you live on here like 
a sheep in a turnip-field! If you were braver — " 
and here she paused, conscience-smitten. 

"Do I, indeed, lack courage?" inquired Mr. 
Archer of himself. "Courage, the footstool of the 
virtues, upon which they stand? Courage, that a 
poor private carrying a musket has to spare of; 
that does not fail a weasel or a rat; that is a brutish 
faculty? I. to fail there, I wonder? But what is 
courage, then? The constancy to endure oneself or 
to see others suffer ? The itch of ill-advised activity 
— mere shuttle-wittedness — or to be still and pa- 
tient? To inquire of the significance of words is 
to rob ourselves of what we seem to know, and yet, 
of all things, certainly to stand still is the least 
heroic. Nance," he said, "did you ever hear of 
Hamlet?'' 

"Never," said Nance. 

"'Tis an old play," returned Mr. Archer, "and 
frequently enacted. This while I have been talking 



252 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

Hamlet. You must know this Hamlet was a Prince 
among the Danes," and he told her the play in a 
very good style, here and there quoting a verse or two 
with solemn emphasis. 

"It is strange," said Nance; "he was then a very 
poor creature?" 

"That was what he could not tell," said Mr. 
Archer. "Look at me; am I as poor a creature?" 

She looked, and what she saw was the familiar 
thought of all her hours; the tall figure very plainly 
habited in black, the spotless ruffles, the slim hands; 
the long, well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide 
and somewhat thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that 
were so full of depth and change and colour. He was 
gazing at her with his brows a little knit, his chin upon 
one hand and that elbow resting on his knee. 

"Ye look a man!" she cried, "ay, and should be a 
great one! The more shame to you to lie here idle 
like a dog before the fire." 

"My fair Holdaway," quoth Mr. Archer, "you are 
much set on action. I cannot dig, to beg I am 
ashamed." He continued, looking at her with a 
half-absent fixity: "'Tis a strange thing, certainly, 
that in my years of fortune I should never taste hap- 
piness, and now when I am broke, enjoy so much of 
it, for was I ever happier than to-day? Was the 
grass softer, the stream pleasanter in sound, the air 
milder, the heart more at peace? Why should I 
not sink ? To dig — why, after all, it should be 
easy. To take a mate, too? Love is of all grades 
since Jupiter; love fails to none; and children — " 
but here he passed his hand suddenly over his eyes. 



THE BLEACHING-GREEN 253 

'^O fool and coward, fool and coward!" he said bit- 
terly; "can you forget your fetters? You did not 
know that I was fettered, Nance?" he asked, again 
addressing her. 

But Nance was somewhat sore. "I know you 
keep talking," she said, and, turning half away from 
him, began to wring out a sheet across her shoulder. 
^' I wonder you are not wearied of your voice. When 
the hands lie abed the tongue takes a walk." 

Mr. Archer laughed unpleasantly, rose and moved 
to the water's edge. In this part the body of the 
river poured across a little narrow fell, ran some ten 
feet very smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting 
wind, as it were, of another shelf of rock which barred 
the channel, began, by imperceptible degrees, to 
separate towards either shore in dancing currents, 
and to leave the middle clear and stagnant. The 
set towards either side was nearly equal: about one 
half of the whole water plunged on the side of the 
castle, through a narrow gullet; about one half ran 
lipping past the margin of the green and slipped 
across a babbHng rapid. 

"Here," said Mr. Archer, after he had looked for 
some time at the fine and shifting demarcation of 
these currents, "come here and see me try my 
fortune." 

"I am not like a man," said Nance; '*I have no 
time to waste." 

"Come here," he said again. "I ask you seri- 
ously, Nance. We are not always childish when we 
seem so." 

She drew a little nearer. 



254 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

"Now," said he, "you see these two channels — 
choose one." 

"I'll choose the nearest, to save time," said 
Nance. 

"Well, that shall be for action," returned Mr. 
Archer. "And since I wish to have the odds against 
me, not only the other channel but yon stagnant 
water in the midst shall be for lying still. You see 
this?" he continued, pulling up a withered rush, "I 
break it in three. I shall put each separately at the 
top of the upper fall, and according as they go by 
your way or by the other I shall guide my life." 

"This is very silly," said Nance, with a movement 
of her shoulders. 

"I do not think so," said Mr. Archer. 

"And then," she resumed, "if you are to try your 
fortune, why not evenly?" 

"Nay," returned Mr. Archer, with a smile, "no 
man can put complete reliance in blind Fate; he 
must still cog the dice." 

By this time he had got upon the rock beside the 
upper fall, and, bidding her look out, dropped a piece 
of rush into the middle of the intake. The rusty 
fragment was sucked at once over the fall, came up 
again far on the right hand, leaned ever more and 
more in the same direction, and disappeared under 
the hanging grasses on the castle side. 

"One," said Mr. Archer, "one for standing still." 

But the next launch had a different fate, and after 
hanging for a while about the edge of the stagnant 
water, steadily approached the bleaching-green and 
danced down the rapid under Nance's eyes. 



THE BLEACHING-GREEN 255 

"One for me," she cried with some exultation; 
and then she observed that Mr. Archer had grown 
pale, and was kneeling on the rock, with his hand 
raised Hke a person petrified. "Why," said she, 
"you do not mind it, do you?" 

"Does a man not mind a throw of dice by which 
a fortune hangs?" said Mr. Archer, rather hoarsely. 
"And this is more than fortune. Nance, if you have 
any kindness for my fate, put up a prayer before I 
launch the next one." 

"A prayer," she cried, "about a game like this? 
I would not be so heathen." 

"Well," said he, "then without," and he closed his 
eyes and dropped the piece of rush. This time there 
was no doubt. It went for the rapid as straight as 
any arrow. 

"Action then!" said Mr. Archer, getting to his 
feet; "and then God forgive us," he added, almost 
to himself. 

"God forgive us, indeed," cried Nance, "for wast- 
ing the good daylight! But come, Mr. Archer, if I 
see you look so serious I shall begin to think you 
was in earnest." 

"Nay," he said, turning upon her suddenly, with 
a full smile; "but is not this good advice? I have 
consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the river, 
and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed 
Minerva. Both have said the same. My own 
heart was telling it already. Action, then, be mine; 
and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casu- 
istry. I am happy to-day for the first time." 



256 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 



VIII 

THE MAIL-GUARD 

Somewhere about two in the morning a squall 
had burst upon the castle, a clap of screaming wind 
that made the towers rock, and a copious drift of 
rain that streamed from the windows. The wind 
soon blew itself out, but the day broke cloudy and 
dripping, and when the little party assembled at 
breakfast, their humours appeared to have changed 
with the change of weather. Nance had been brood- 
ing on the scene at the river-side, applying it in 
various ways to her particular aspirations, and the 
result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken 
the colour out of her cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was 
somewhat absent; his thoughts were of a mingled 
strain; and even upon his usually impassive coun- 
tenance there were betrayed successive depths of 
depression and starts of exultation, which the girl 
translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But 
Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely 
silent, hardly passing a word, and watched Mr. 
Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as 
if the idea that had so long hovered before him had 
now taken a more solid shape, and, while it still 
attracted, somewhat alarmed his imagination. 

At this rate, conversation languished into a silence 
which was only broken by the gentle and ghostly 
noises of the rain on the stone roof and about all that 
field of ruins; and they were all relieved when the 



THE MAIL-GUARD 257 

note of a man whistling and the sound of approach- 
ing footsteps in the grassy court announced a visitor. 
It was the hostler from the Green Dragon bringing 
a letter for Mr. Archer. Nance saw her hero's face 
contract and then relax again at the sight of it; and 
she thought that she knew why, for the sprawling, 
gross black characters of the address were easily 
distinguishable from the fme writing on the former 
letter that had so much disturbed him. He opened 
it and began to read; while the hostler sat down to 
table with a pot of ale, and proceeded to make him- 
self agreeable after his fashion. 

"Fine doings down our way. Miss Nance," said 
he. "I haven't been abed this blessed night." 

Nance expressed a polite interest, but her eye was 
on Mr. Archer, who was reading his letter with a 
face of such extreme indifference that she was 
tempted to suspect him of assumption. 

"Yes," continued the hostler, "not been the like 
of it this fifteen years: the North Mail stopped at 
the three stones." 

Jonathan's cup was at his lip, but at this moment 
he choked with a great splutter; and Mr. Archer, as 
if startled by the noise, made so sudden a movement 
that one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed be- 
tween his finger and thumb. It was some little 
time before the old man was sufficiently recovered 
to beg the hostler to go on, and he still kept coughing 
and crying and rubbing his eyes. Mr. Archer, on 
his side, laid the letter down, and putting his hands 
in his pocket, listened gravely to the tale. 

"Yes," resumed Sam, "the North Mail was 



258 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

stopped by a single horseman; dash my wig, but I 
admire him! There were four insides and two out, 
and poor Tom Oglethorpe, the guard. Tom showed 
himself a man; let fly his blunderbuss at him; 
had him covered, too, and could swear to that; but 
the Captain never let on, up with a pistol and 
fetched poor Tom a bullet through the body. Tom, 
he squelched upon the seat, all over blood. Up 
comes the Captain to the window. 'Oblige me,' 
says he, 'with what you have.' Would you believe 
it? not a man says cheep! — not them! 'Thy hands 
over thy head.' Four watches, rings, snuff-boxes, 
seven-and-forty pounds overhead in gold. One 
Dicksee, a grazier, tries it on: gives him a guinea. 
'Beg your pardon,' says the Captain, 'I think too 
highly of you to take it at your hand. I will not 
take less than ten from such a gentleman.' This 
Dicksee had his money in his stocking, but there was 
the pistol at his eye. Down he goes, offs with his 
stocking, and there was thirty golden guineas. 
'Now,' says the Captain, 'you've tried it on with 
me, but I scorns the advantage. Ten, I said,' he 
says, 'and ten I take.' So, dash my buttons, I call 
thafman a man!" cried Sam, in cordial admiration. 

"Well, and then?" says Mr. Archer. 

"Then," resumed Sam, "that fat old fagot Engle- 
ton, him as held the ribbons and drew up like a 
lamb when he was told to, picks up his cattle, and 
drives off again. Down they came to the Dragon, 
all singing Hke as if they was scalded, and poor 
Tom saying nothing. You would 'a' thought they 
had all lost the King's crown to hear them. Down 



THE MAIL-GUARD 259 

gets this Dicksee. 'Postmaster,' he says, taking 
him by the arm, 'this is a most abominable thing,' 
he says. Down gets a Major Clayton, and gets the 
old man by the other arm. 'We 've been robbed,' 
he cries, 'robbed!' Down gets the others, and all 
round the old man telling their story, and what they 
had lost, and how they was all as good as ruined; 
till at last old Engleton says, says he, 'How about 
Oglethorpe?' says he. 'Ay,' says the others, 'how 
about the guard?' Well, with that we bousted him 
down, as white as a rag and all blooded like a sop. 
I thought he was dead. Well, he ain't dead; but 
he 's dying, I fancy." 

"Did you say four watches?" said Jonathan. 

"Four, I think. I wish it had been forty," cried 
Sam. " Such a party of soured herrings I never did 
see — not a man among them bar poor Tom. But 
us that are the servants on the road have all the risk 
and none of the profit." 

"And this brave fellow," asked Mr. Archer, very 
quietly, "this Oglethorpe — how is he now?" 

"Well, sir, with my respects, I take it he has a 
hole bang through him," said Sam. "The doctor 
hasn't been yet. He'd 'a' been bright and early if 
it had been a passenger. But, doctor or no, I '11 
make a good guess that Tom won't see to-morrow. 
He '11 die on a Sunday, will poor Tom; and they do 
say that 's fortunate." 

"Did Tom see him that did it?" asked Jonathan. 

"Well, he saw him," replied Sam, "but not to 
swear by. Said he was a very tall man, and very big, 
and had a 'andkerchief about his face, and a very 



26o THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

quick shot, and sat his horse like a thorough gentle- 
man, as he is." 

" A gentleman ! ' ' cried Nance. The dirty knave ! ' ' 

"Well, I calls a man Hke that a gentleman," 
returned the hostler; "that's what I mean by a 
gentleman." 

"You don't know much of them, then," said 
Nance. "A gentleman would scorn to stoop to such 
a thing. I call my uncle a better gentleman than 
any thief." 

"And you would be right," said Mr. Archer. 

"How many snuEf-boxes did he get?" asked Jona- 
than. 

"O, dang me, if I know," said Sam; "I didn't 
take an inventory." 

"I will go back with you, if you please," said Mr. 
Archer. "I should Hke to see poor Oglethorpe. 
He has behaved well." 

"At your service, sir," said Sam, jumping to his 
feet. "I dare to say a gentleman hke you would not 
forget a poor fellow like Tom — no, nor a plain 
man like me, sir, that went without his sleep to 
nurse him. And excuse me, sir," added Sam, "you 
won't forget about the letter, neither?" 

"Surely not," said Mr. Archer. 

Oglethorpe lay in a low bed, one of several in a 
long garret of the inn. The rain soaked in places 
through the roof and fell in minute drops; there was 
but one small window; the beds were occupied by 
servants, the air of the garret was both close and 
chilly. Mr. Archer's heart sank at the threshold to 
see a man lying perhaps mortally hurt in so poor a 



THE MAIL-GUARD 261 

sick-room, and as he drew near the low bed he took 
his hat off. The guard was a big, blowzy, innocent- 
looking soul with a thick lip and a broad nose, com- 
ically turned up; his cheeks were crimson, and when 
Mr. Archer laid a finger on his brow he found him 
burning with fever. 

*' I fear you suffer much," he said, with a catch in 
his voice, as he sat down on the bedside. 

"I suppose I do, sir," returned Oglethorpe; "it is 
main sore." 

"I am used to wounds and wounded men," re- 
turned the visitor. "I have been in the wars and 
nursed brave fellows before now; and, if you will 
suffer me, I propose to stay beside you till the doctor 
comes." 

"It is very good of you, sir, I am sure," said Ogle- 
thorpe. "The trouble is they won't none of them 
let me drink." 

"If you will not tell the doctor," said Mr. Archer, 
" I will give you some water. They say it is bad for 
a green wound, but in the Low Countries we all 
drank water when we found the chance, and I could 
never perceive we were the worse for it." 

"Been wounded yourself, sir, perhaps?" called 
Oglethorpe. 

"Twice," said Mr. Archer, "and was as proud of 
these hurts as any lady of her bracelets. 'T is a 
fine thing to smart for one's duty; even in the pangs 
of it there is contentment." 

"Ah, well!" replied the guard, "if you've been 
shot yourself, that explains. But as for content- 
ment, why, sir, you see, it smarts, as you say. And 



262 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 

thin, I have a good wife, you see, and a bit of a brat 
— a little thing, so high." 

"Don't move," said Mr. Archer. 

"No, sir, I will not, and thank you kindly," said 
Oglethorpe. "At York they are. A very good lass 
is my wife — far too good for me. And the little 
rascal — well, I don't know how to say it, but he 
sort of comes around you. If I were to go, sir, it 
would be hard on my poor girl — main hard on her!" 

"Ay, you must feel bitter hardly to the rogue that 
laid you here," said Mr. Archer. 

"Why, no, sir, more against Engleton and the 
passengers," rephed the guard. "He played his 
hand, if you come to look at it; and I wish ^he had 
shot worse, or me better. And yet I '11 go to my 
grave but what I covered him," he cried. "It looks 
like witchcraft. I '11 go to my grave but what he 
was full of slugs like a pepper-box." 

"Quietly," said Mr. Archer, "you must not excite 
yourself. These deceptions are very usual in war; 
the eye, in a moment of alert, is hardly to be trusted, 
and when the smoke blows away you see the man 
you fired at, taking aim, it may be, at yourself. You 
should observe, too, that you were in the dark night, 
and somewhat dazzled by the lamps, and that the 
sudden stopping of the mail had jolted you. In such 
circumstances a man may miss, ay, even with a 
blunderbuss, and no blame attach to his marks- 
manship." . . . 



EDITORIAL NOTE 263 



EDITORIAL NOTE 

By Sidney Colvin 

The Editor is unable to furnish any information as to the 
intended plot of the story which breaks off thus abruptly. 
From very early days Mr. Stevenson had purposed to write 
(since circumstances did not allow him to enact) a romance of 
the highway. The purpose seems to have ripened after his 
recovery from the acute attack of illness which interrupted his 
work from about Christmas, 1883, to September, 1884. The 
chapters above printed were written at Bournemouth soon after 
the latter date; but neither Mr. Henley nor I, though we remem- 
ber many conversations with the writer on highway themes in 
general, can recall the origin or intended course of this par- 
ticular story. Its plot can hardly be forecast from these open- 
ing chapters; nor do the writer's own words, in a letter written 
at the time to Mr. Henley, take us much further, except in so 
far as they show that it was growing under his hands to be a 
more serious effort than he first contemplated. ^^The Great 
North Road,'' he writes, "which I thought to rattle off, like 
Treasure Island, for coin, has turned into my most ambitious 
design, and will take piles of writing and thinking; so that is 
what my highwayman has turned to! The ways of Providence 
are inscrutable. Mr. Archer and Jonathan Holdaway are both 
grand premier parts of unusual difficulty, and Nance and the 
Sergeant — the first very delicate, and the second demanding 
great geniality. I quail before the gale, but so help me, it 
shall be done. It is highly picturesque, most dramatic, and if 
it can be made, as human as man. Besides, it is a true story, 
and not, like Otto, one half story and one half play." Soon 
after the date of this letter the author laid aside the tale in order 
to finish for press the second half of More New Arabian Nights 
— The Dynamiter, and never took it up again. 



THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
A FRAGMENT 



THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
PROLOGUE 

THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 

THERE was a wine-seller's shop, as you went 
down to the river in the city of the Antipopes. 
There a man was served with good wine of 
the country and plain country fare; and the place 
being clean and quiet, with a prospect on the river, 
certain gentlemen who dwelt in that city in attend- 
ance on a great personage made it a practice (when 
they had any silver in their purses) to come and eat 
there and be private. 

They called the wine-seller Paradou. He was built 
more like a bullock than a man, huge in bone and 
brawn, high in colour, and with a hand like a 
baby for size. Marie-Madeleine was the name of 
his wife; she was of Marseilles, a city of entrancing 
women, nor was any fairer than herself. She was 
tall, being almost of a height with Paradou; full- 
girdled, point-device in every form, with an exquisite 
delicacy in the face; her nose and nostrils a delight 
to look at from the fineness of the sculpture, her eyes 
inclined a hair's-breadth inward, her colour between 
dark and fair, and laid on even like a flower's. A 
faint rose in it, as though she had been found un- 
awares bathing, and had blushed from head to foot. 

267 



268 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

She was of a grave countenance, rarely smiling; yet 
it seemed to be written upon every part of her that 
she rejoiced in life. Her husband loved the heels 
of her feet and the knuckles of her fingers; he loved 
her like a glutton and a brute; his love hung about 
her like an atmosphere; one that came by chance 
into the wine-shop was aware of that passion; and 
it might be said that by the strength of it the woman 
had been drugged or spell-bound. She knew not if 
she loved or loathed him; he was always in her eyes 
like something monstrous — monstrous in his love, 
monstrous in his person, horrific but imposing in his 
violence ; and her sentiment swung back and forward 
from desire to sickness. But the mean, where it 
dwelt chiefly, was an apathetic fascination, partly of 
horror; as of Europa in mid-ocean with her bull. 

On the loth November, 1749, there sat two of the 
foreign gentlemen in the wine-seller's shop. They 
were both handsome men of a good presence, richly 
dressed. The first was swarthy and long and lean, 
with an alert, black look, and a mole upon his cheek. 
The other was more fair. He seemed very easy and 
sedate, and a little melancholy for so young a man, 
but his smile was charming. In his grey eyes there 
was much abstraction, as of one recalling fondly that 
which was past and lost. Yet there was strength 
and swiftness in his limbs; and his mouth set straight 
across his face, the under lip a thought upon side, 
like that of a man accustomed to resolve. These 
two talked together in a rude outlandish speech that 
no frequenter of that wine-shop understood. The 
swarthy man answered to the name of Ballantrae; 



THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 269 

he of the dreamy eyes was sometimes called Balmilej 
and sometimes my Lord, or my Lord Gladsmiiir; but 
when the title was given him, he seemed to put it by 
as if in jesting, not without bitterness. 

The mistral blew in the city. The first day of 
that wind, they say in the countries where its voice 
is heard, it blows away all the dust, the second all the 
stones, and the third it blows back others from the 
mountains. It was now come to the third day; 
outside the pebbles flew like hail, and the face of 
the river was puckered, and the very building-stones 
in the walls of houses seemed to be curdled, with the 
savage cold and fury of that continuous blast. It 
could be heard to hoot in all the chimneys of the city; 
it swept about the wine-shop, filling the room with 
eddies; the chill and gritty touch of it passed be- 
tween the nearest clothes and the bare flesh; and 
the two gentlemen at the far table kept their mantles 
loose about their shoulders. The roughness of 
these outer hulls, for they were plain travellers' 
cloaks that had seen service, set the greater mark of 
richness on what showed below of their laced 
clothes; for the one was in scarlet and the other in 
vioht and white, like men come from a scene of 
ceremony; as indeed they were. 

It chanced that these fine clothes were not without 
their influence on the scene which followed, and 
which makes the prologue of our tale. For a long 
time Balmile was in the habit to come to the wine- 
shop and eat a meal or drink a measure of wine; 
sometimes with a comrade; more often alone, when 
he would sit and dream and drum upon the table. 



270 



THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 



and the thoughts would show in the man's face in 
little glooms and lightenings, like the sun and the 
clouds upon a water. For a long time Marie- 
Madeleine had observed him apart. His sadness, 
the beauty of his smile when by any chance he re- 
membered her existence and addressed her, the 
changes of his mind signalled forth by an abstruse 
play of feature, the mere fact that he was foreign and 
a thing detached from the local and the accustomed, 
insensibly attracted and affected her. Kindness was 
ready in her mind; but it lacked the touch of an 
occasion to effervesce and crystallise. Now Bal- 
mile had come hitherto in a very poor plain habit; 
and this day of the mistral, when his mantle was just 
open, and she saw beneath it the glancing of the 
violet and the velvet and the silver, and the clustering 
fineness of the lace, it seemed to set the man in a 
new light, with which he shone resplendent to her 
fancy. 

The high inhuman note of the wind, the violence 
and continuity of its outpouring, and the fierce touch 
of it upon man's whole periphery, accelerated the 
functions of the mind. It set thoughts whirling, as 
it whirled the trees of the forest; it stirred them up 
in flights, as it stirred up the dust in chambers. As 
brief as sparks, the fancies glittered and succeeded 
each other in the mind of Marie-Madeleine; and the 
grave man with the smile, and the bright clothes 
under the plain mantle, haunted her with incon- 
gruous explanations. She considered him, the un- 
known, the speaker of an unknown tongue, the hero 
(as she placed him) of an unknown romance, the 



THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 271 

dweller upon unknown memories. She recalled him 
sitting there alone, so immersed, so stupefied; yet 
she was sure he was not stupid. She recalled one 
day when he had remained a long time motionless, 
with parted lips-, like one in the act of starting up, 
his eyes fixed on vacancy. Any one else must have 
looked foolish, but not he. She tried to conceive 
what manner of memory had thus entranced him; 
she forged for him a past; she showed him to herself 
in every light of heroism and greatness and misfor- 
tune; she brooded with petulant intensity on all she 
knew and guessed of him. Yet, though she was 
already gone so deep, she was still unashamed, still 
unalarmed; her thoughts were still disinterested; 
she had still to reach the stage at which — beside the 
image of that other whom we love to contemplate 
and to adorn — we place the image of ourself and 
behold them together with delight. 

She stood within the counter, her hands clasped 
behind her back, her shoulders pressed against the 
wall, her ffeet braced out. Her face was bright with 
the wind and her own thoughts; as a fire in a similar 
day of tempest glows and brightens on a hearth, so 
she seemed to glow, standing there, and to breathe 
out energy. It was the first time Ballantrae had 
visited that wine-seller's, the first time he had seen 
the wife; and his eyes were true to her. 

"I perceive your reason for carrying me to this 
very draughty tavern," he said at last. 

"I believe it is propinquity," returned Balmile. 

''You play dark," said Ballantrae, "but have a 
care! Be more frank with me, or I will cut you out. 



272 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

I go through no form of quahfying my threat, 
which would be commonplace and not conscientious. 
There is only one point in these campaigns: that is 
the degree of admiration offered by the man; and to 
our hostess I am in a posture to make victorious love." 

"If you think you have the time, or the game 
worth the candle," replied the other, with a shrug. 

" One would suppose you were never at the pains 
to observe her," said Ballantrae. 

"I am not very observant," said Balmile. "She 
seems comely." 

"You very dear and dull dog!" cried Ballantrae; 
"chastity is the most besotting of the virtues. Why, 
she has a look in her face beyond singing! I believe, 
if you were to push me hard, I might trace it home 
to a trifle of a squint. What matters ? The height 
of beauty is in the touch that 's wrong, that 's the 
modulation in a tune. 'T is the devil we all love; 
I owe many a conquest to my mole" — he touched 
it as he spoke with a smile, and his eyes glittered; 
"we are all hunchbacks, and beauty is only that kind 
of deformity that I happen to admire. But come! 
Because you are chaste, for which I am sure I pay 
you my respects, that is no reason why you should 
be blind. Look at her, look at the delicious nose of 
her, look at her cheek, look at her ear, look at her 
hand and wrist — look at the whole baggage from 
heels to crown, and tell me if she wouldn't melt on 
a man's tongue." 

As Ballantrae spoke, half jesting, half enthusiastic, 
Balmile was constrained to do as he was bidden. 
He looked at the woman, admired her excellences, 



THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 273 

and was at the same time ashamed of himself and 
his companion. So it befell that when Marie- 
Madeleine raised her eyes, she met those of the sub- 
ject of her contemplations fixed directly on herself 
with a look that is unmistakable, the look of a person 
measuring and valuing another, — and, to clench 
the false impression, that his glance was instantly 
and guiltily withdrawn. The blood beat back upon 
her heart and leaped again; her obscure thoughts 
flashed clear before her; she flew in fancy straight 
to his arms like a wanton, and fled again on the in- 
stant like a nymph. And at that moment there 
chanced an interruption, which not only spared her 
embarrassment, but set the last consecration on her 
now articulate love. 

Into the wine-shop there came a French gentle- 
man, arrayed in the last refinement of the fashion, 
though a little tumbled by his passage in the wind. 
It was to be judged he had come from the same 
formal gathering at which the others had preceded 
him; and perhaps that he had gone there in the hope 
to meet wath them, for he came up to Ballantrae 
with unceremonious eagerness. 

"At last, here you are!" he cried in French. "I 
thought I was to miss you altogether." 

The Scotsmen rose, and Ballantrae, after the first 
greetings, laid his hand on his companion's shoulder. 

"My Lord," said he, "allow me to present to you 
one of my best friends and one of our best soldiers, 
the Lord Viscount Gladsmuir." 

The two bowed with the elaborate elegance of the 
period. 



274 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

^^Monseigneur,^^ said Balmile, ^'je fi'ai pas la 
pretention de m' ajubler d^un titre que la mauvaise 
fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter comme 
il sied. Je m* appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de 
Balmile tout court.^' ("My Lord, I have not the 
effrontery to cumber myself with a title which the ill 
fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the 
way it should be. I call myself, at your service, 
plain Blair of Balmile.") 

"Monsieur le Vicomte ou Monsieur Blef de Bal- 
ma'il,''^ replied the new-comer, "le nom n'y fait rien, 
et Von connait vos beaux faits.^^ (" The name matters 
nothing; your gallant actions are known.") 

A few more ceremonies, and these three, sitting 
down together to the table, called for wine. It was 
the happiness of Marie-Madeleine to wait unob- 
served upon the prince of her desires. She poured 
the wine, he drank of it; and that link between 
them seemed to her, for the moment, close as a 
caress. Though they lowered their tones, she sur- 
prised great names passing in their conversation, 
names of kings, the names of De Gesvre and Belle- 
Isle; and the man who dealt in these high matters, 
and she who was now coupled with him in her own 
thoughts, seemed to swim in mid-air in a transfigura- 
tion. Love is a crude core, but it has singular and 
far-reaching fringes; in that passionate attraction 
for the stranger that now swayed and mastered her, 
his harsh incomprehensible language, and these 
names of grandees in his talk, were each an element. 

The Frenchman stayed not long, but it was plain 
he left behind him matter of much interest to his 



THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 275 

companions; they spoke together earnestly, their 
heads down, the woman of the wine-shop totally 
forgotten; and they were still so occupied when 
Paradou returned. 

This man's love was unsleeping. The even blus- 
ter of the mistral, with which he had been combating 
some hours, had not suspended, though it had em- 
bittered that predominant passion. His first look 
was for his wife, a look of hope and suspicion, men- 
ace and humihty and love, that made the over- 
blooming brute appear for the moment almost beau- 
tiful. She returned his glance, at first as though she 
knew him not, then with a swiftly waxing coldness 
of intent; and at last, without changing their direc- 
tion, she had closed her eyes. 

There passed across her mind during that period 
much that Paradou could not have understood had 
it been told to him in words: chiefly the sense of an 
enlightening contrast betwixt the man who talked 
of kings and the man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt 
the love she yearned for and that to which she had 
been long exposed like a victim bound upon the 
altar. There swelled upon her, swifter than the 
Rhone, a tide of abhorrence and disgust. She had 
succumbed to the monster, humbling herself below 
animals; and now she loved a hero, aspiring to the 
semi-divine. It was in the pang of that humiliating 
thought that she had closed her eyes. 

Paradou — quick, as beasts are quick, to translate 
silence — felt the insult through his blood; his in- 
articulate soul bellowed within him for revenge. He 
glanced about the shop. He saw the two indifferent 



276 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

gentlemen deep in talk, and passed them over: his 
fancy flying not so high. There was but one other 
present, a country lout who stood swallowing his 
wine, equally unobserved by all and unobserving; 
to him he dealt a glance of murderous suspicion, 
and turned direct upon his wife. The wine-shop 
had lain hitherto, a space of shelter, the scene of a 
few ceremonial passages and some whispered con- 
versation, in the howling river of the wind; the 
clock had not yet ticked a score of times since Para- 
dou's appearance; and now, as he suddenly gave 
tongue, it seemed as though the mistral had entered 
at his heels. 

"What ails you, woman?" he cried, smiting on 
the counter. 

"Nothing ails me," she replied. It was strange; 
but she spoke and stood at that moment like a lady 
of degree, drawn upward by her aspirations. 

"You speak to me, by God, as though you scorned 
me!" cried the husband. 

The man's passion was always formidable; she 
had often looked on upon its violence with a thrill — 
it had been one ingredient in her fascination; and 
she was now surprised to behold him, as from afar 
off, gesticulating but impotent. His fury might be 
dangerous like a torrent or a gust of wind, but it was 
inhuman; it might be feared or braved, it should 
never be respected. And with that there came in 
her a sudden glow of courage and that readiness to 
die which attends so closely upon all strong passions. 

"I do scorn you," she said. 

"What is that?" he cried. 



THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 277 

"I scorn you," she repeated, smiling. 

"You love another man!" said he. 

"With all my soul," was her reply. 

The wine-seller roared aloud so that the house 
rang and shook with it. 

"Is this the ?" he cried, using a foul word, 

common in the South; and he seized the young 
countryman and dashed him to the ground. There 
he lay for the least interval of time insensible; thence 
fled from the house, the most terrified person in the 
county. The heavy measure had escaped from his 
hands, splashing the wine high upon the wall. 
Paradou caught it. "And you?" he roared to his 
wife, giving her the same name in the feminine, and 
he aimed at her the deadly missile. She expected 
it, motionless, with radiant eyes. 

But before it sped, Paradou was met by another 
adversary, and the unconscious rivals stood con- 
fronted. It was hard to say at that moment which 
appeared the more formidable. In Paradou, the 
whole muddy and truculent depths of the half-man 
were stirred to frenzy; the lust of destruction raged 
in him; there was not a feature in his face but it 
talked murder. Balmile had dropped his cloak: he 
shone out at once in his finery, and stood to his full 
stature; girt in mind and body; all his resources, 
all his temper, perfectly in command; in his face 
the light of battle. Neither spoke; there was no 
blow nor threat of one; it was war reduced to its 
last element, the spiritual; and the huge wine- 
seller slowly lowered his weapon. Balmile was a 
noble, he a commoner; Balmile exulted in an hon- 



278 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

Durable cause. Paradou already perhaps began to 
be ashamed of his violence. Of a sudden, at least, 
the tortured brute turned and fled from the shop, in 
the footsteps of his former victim, to whose continued 
flight his reappearance added wings. 

So soon as Balmile appeared between her husband 
and herself, Marie-Madeleine transferred to him her 
eyes. It might be her last moment, and she fed 
upon that face; reading there inimitable courage 
and illimitable valour to protect. And when the 
momentary peril was gone by, and the champion 
turned a little awkwardly towards her whom he had 
rescued, it was to meet, and quail before, a gaze of 
admiration more distinct than words. He bowed, 
he stammered, his words failed him; he who had 
crossed the floor a moment ago, like a young god, 
to smite, returned like one discomfited: got some- 
how to his place by the table, muffled himself again 
in his discarded cloak, and for a last touch of the 
ridiculous, seeking for anything to restore his coun- 
tenance, drank of the wine before him, deep as a 
porter after a heavy lift. It was little wonder if 
BaUantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes, 
laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised 
glass, "To the champion of the Fair." 

Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the 
counter; she disdained the mocking laughter; it fell 
on her ears, but it did not reach her spirit. For her, 
the world of living persons was all resumed again 
into one pair, as in the days of Eden; there was but 
the one end in life, the one hope before her, the one 
thing needful, the one thing possible, — to be his. 



THE PRINCE 279 



THE PRINCE 

That same night there was in the city of Avignon 
a young man in distress of mind. Now he sat, now 
walked in a high apartment, full of draughts and 
shadows. A single candle made the darkness visible ; 
and the light scarce sufficed to show upon the wall, 
where they had been recently and rudely nailed, a 
few miniatures and a copper medal of the young 
man's head. The same was being sold that year in 
London to admiring thousands. The original was 
fair; he had beautiful brown eyes, a beautiful bright 
open face; a little feminine, a little hard, a little 
weak; still full of the light of youth, but already be- 
ginning to be vulgarised; a sordid bloom come upon 
it, the lines coarsened with a touch of pufhness. He 
was dressed, as for a gala, in peach-colour and silver; 
his breast sparkled with stars and was bright with 
ribbons; for he had held a levee in the afternoon 
and received a distinguished personage incognito. 
Now he sat with a bowed head, now walked precipi- 
tately to and fro, now went and gazed from the un- 
curtained window, where the wind was still blowing, 
and the lights winked in the darkness. 

The bells of Avignon rose into song as he was 
gazing; and the high notes and the deep tossed 
and drowned, boomed suddenly near or were sud- 
denly swallowed up, in the current of the mistral. 
Tears sprang in the pale blue eyes; the expression of 
his face was changed to that of a more active mis- 



28o THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

ery; it seemed as if the voices of the bells reached, 
and touched and pained him, in a waste of vacancy 
where even pain was welcome. Outside in the night 
they continued to sound on, swelling and fainting; 
and the listener heard in his memory, as it were, 
their harmonies, joy-bells clashing in a Northern 
city, and the acclamations of a multitude, the cries 
of battle, the gross voices of cannon, the stridor of 
an animated life. And then all died away, and he 
stood face to face with himself in the waste of 
vacancy, and a horror came upon his mind, and a 
faintness on his brain, such as seizes men upon the 
brink of cliffs. 

On the table, by the side of the candle, stood a 
tray of glasses, a bottle and a silver bell. He went 
thither swiftly, then his hand lowered first above the 
bell, then settled on the bottle. Slowly he filled a 
glass, slowly drank it out; and, as a tide of animal 
warmth recomforted the recesses of his nature, 
stood there smiling at himself. He remembered he 
was young; the funeral curtains rose, and he saw 
his hfe shine and broaden and flow out majestically, 
like a river sunward. The smile still on his lips, he 
lit a second candle, and a third; a fire stood ready 
built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones 
and the gnarled oHve billets were swift to break in 
flame and to crackle on the hearth, and the room 
brightened and enlarged about him like his hopes. 
To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly 
clasped, his breath deeply and pleasurably taken. 
Victory walked with him; he marched to crowns 
and empires among shouting followers; glory was his 
dress. And presently again the shadows closed upon 



THE PRINCE 281 

the solitary. Under the gilt of flame and candle light, 
the stone walls of the apartment showed down bare 
and cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed up 
the actual failure: defeat, the long distress of the 
flight, exile, despair, broken followers, mourning 
faces, empty pockets, friends estranged. The mem- 
ory of his father rose in his mind: he, too, estranged 
and defied; despair sharpened into wrath. There 
was one who had led armies in the field, who had 
staked his life upon the family enterprise, a man of 
action and experience of the open air, the camp, 
the court, the council-room; and he Vv^as to accept 
direction from an old, pompous gentleman in a 
home in Italy, and buzzed about by priests? A 
pretty king, if he had not a martial son to lean upon! 
A king at all ? 

"There was a weaver (of all people) joined me at 
St. Ninians; he was more of a man than my papa!" 
he thought. "I saw him lie doubled in his blood 
and a grenadier below him — • and he died for my 
papa! All died for him, or risked the dying, and I 
lay for him all those months in the rain and skulked 
in heather like a fox; and now he writes me his ad- 
vice! calls me Carluccio — me, the man of the house, 
the only king in that king's race!" He ground his 
teeth. "The only king in Europe! Who else? Who 
has done and suffered except me ? who has lain and 
run and hidden with his faithful subjects, like a 
second Bruce? Not my accursed cousin, Louis of 
France, at least, the lewd effeminate traitor!" And 
filling the glass to the brim, he drank a king's dam- 
nation. Ah, if he had the power of Louis, what a 
king were here! 



282 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

The minutes followed each other into the past, 
and still he persevered in this debilitating cycle of 
emotions, still fed the fire of his excitement with 
driblets of Rhine wine; a boy at odds with life, a 
boy with a spark of the heroic, which he was now 
burning out and drowning in futile reverie and soli- 
tary excess. 

From two rooms beyond, the sudden sound of a 
raised voice attracted him. 

"By . . . 

EDITORIAL NOTE 
By Sidney Colvin 

The first suggestion for the story of which the above is the 
opening was received by the author from Mr. Andrew Lang, 
It is mentioned in Vailima Letters under date January 3, 1892. 
Writing of the subject again on March 25 of the same year, 
Mr. Stevenson speculates on the title to be chosen and the 
turn the plot is to take; and later again announces that 
he has written the first "prologuial episode," that, namely, 
which the reader has now before him. "There are only four 
characters," he observes: "Francis Blair of Balmile (Jacobite 
Lord Gladsmuir), my hero; the Master of Ballantrae; Paradou, 
a wine-seller of Avignon; Marie-Madeleine, his wife. These 
last two I am now done with, and I think they are successful, 
and I hope I have Balmile on his feet; and the style seems to 
be found. It is a little charged and violent; sins on the side of 
violence; but I think will carry the tale. I think it is a good 
idea so to introduce my hero, being made love to by an episodic 
woman." If the reader will turn to the passage, he will find 
more about the intended developments of the story, which was 
to hinge on the rescue by the Prince of a young lady from a fire 
at an inn, and to bring back upon the scene not only the Master 
of Ballantrae, but one of the author's and his readers' favourite 
characters, Alan Breck. Mr. Lang has been good enough to 
furnish the following interesting notes as to its origin: 



EDITORIAL NOTE 283 

"The novel of The Young Chevalier,''^ writes Mr. Lang, "of 
which only the fragment here given exists, was based on a 
suggestion of my own. But it is plain that Mr. Stevenson's 
purpose differed widely from my crude idea. In reading the 
curious Tales of the Century (1847), by 'John Sobieski Holberg 
Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart,' I had been struck by a 
long essay on Prince Charles's mysterious incognito. Expelled 
from France after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, His Royal 
Highness, in December, 1748, sought refuge in the papal city 
of Avignon, whence, annoyed by English remonstrances with 
the Vatican, he vanished in the last days of February, 1749, 
The Jacobite account of his secret adventures is given in a little 
romance, purporting to be a 'Letter from Henry Goring,' his 
equerry, brother of Sir Charles Goring. I had a transcript 
made from this rather scarce old pamphlet, and sent it to Mr. 
Stevenson, in Samoa. According to the pamphlet (which is 
perfectly untrustworthy), a mysterious stranger, probably 
meant for the Earl Marischal, came to Avignon. There came, 
too, an equally mysterious Scottish exile. Charles eloped in 
company with Henry Goring (which is true), joined the stranger, 
travelled to a place near Lyons, and thence to Strasbourg, 
which is probable. Here he rescued from a fire a lovely girl, 
travelling alone, and disdained to profit by her sudden passion 
for 'le Comte d'Espoir,' his travelling-name. Moving into 
Germany, he was attacked by assassins, headed by the second 
mysterious stranger, a Scottish spy; he performs prodigies of 
valour. He then visits foreign courts, Berlin being indicated, 
and wins the heart of a lady, probably the Princess Radziwill 
whom he is to marry when his prospects improve. All or much 
of this is false. Charles really visited Paris, by way of Dijon, 
and Mme. de Talmont; thence he went to Venice. But the 
stories about Berlin and the Polish marriage were current at 
the time among bewildered diplomatists.^ 

"My idea was to make the narrator a young Scottish Jacobite 
at Avignon. He was to be sent by Charles to seek an actual 
hidden treasure — the fatal gold of the hoard buried at Loch 

^ The real facts, as far as known, are given in Pickle the Spy. 
-[A. L.] 



284 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 

Arkaig a few days after Culloden. He was to be a lover of 
Miss Clementina Walkinshaw, who later played the part of 
Beatrix Esmond to the Prince. 

"Mr. Stevenson liked something in the notion, to which he 
refers in his Vailima Letters. He told me that Alan Breck and 
the Master of Ballantrae were to appear in the tale. I sent him 
such books about Avignon as I could collect, and he also made 
inquiries about Mandrin, the famous French brigand. Shortly 
before his death I sent him transcripts of the unpublished 
letters of his old friend, James More Macgregor, and of Pickle 
the Spy, from the Pelham mss. in the British Museum. But 
these, I think, arrived too late for his perusal. In Pickle he 
would have found some one not very unlike his Ballantrae. 
The fragment, as it stands, looks as if the Scottish assassin and 
the other mysterious stranger were not to appear, or not so 
early as one had supposed. The beautiful woman of the inn 
and her surly husband (Mandrin ?) were inventions of his own. 
Other projects superseded his interest in this tale, and deprived 
us of a fresh view of Alan Breck. His dates, as indicated in 
the fragment, are not exact; and there is no reason to believe 
that Charles's house at Avignon (that of the De Rochefort 
family) was dismantled and comfortless, as here represented. 

"Mr. Stevenson made, as was his habit, a list of chapter 
headings, which I unluckily did not keep. One, I remember, 
was 'Ballantrae to the Rescue,' of v/hom or of what did not ap- 
pear. It is impossible to guess how the story would have 
finally shaped itself in his fancy. One naturally regrets what 
we have lost, however great the compensation in the works 
which took the place of the sketch. Our Prince Charles of 
romance must remain the Prince of Waverley and the King of 
Redgauntlet. No other hand now can paint him in the adven- 
turous and mysterious years of 1749-59. Often, since Mr. 
Stevenson's death, in reading Jacobite mss. unknown to me or 
to any one when the story was planned, I have thought, 'He 
could have done something with this,' or 'This would have 
interested him.' Eheu!" 



HEATHERCAT 

A FRAGMENT 



HEATHERCAT 

PART I: THE KILLING-TIME 

I 

TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT 

THE period of this tale is in the heat of the 
killing-time; the scene laid for the most part 
in solitary hills and morasses, haunted only 
by the so-called Mountain Wanderers, the dragoons 
that came in chase of them, the women that wept on 
their dead bodies, and the wild birds of the moorland 
that have cried there since the beginning. It is a 
land of many rain-clouds; a land of much mute his- 
tory, written there in prehistoric symbols. Strange 
green raths are to be seen commonly in the coun- 
try, above all by the kirkyards; barrows of the dead, 
standing stones; beside these, the faint, durable 
footprints and handmarks of the Roman; and an 
antiquity older perhaps than any, and still living 
and active — a complete Celtic nomenclature and 
a scarce-mingled Celtic population. These rugged 
and grey hills were once included in the boundaries 
of the Caledonian Forest. Merlin sat here below 
his apple-tree and lamented Gwendolen; here spoke 
with Kentigern; here fell into his enchanted trance. 
287 



288 HEATHERCAT 

And the legend of his slumber seems to body forth 
the story of that Celtic race, deprived for so many 
centuries of their authentic speech, surviving with 
their ancestral inheritance of melancholy perversity 
and patient, unfortunate courage. 

The Traquairs of Montroymont {Mons Romanus, 
as the erudite expound it) had long held their seat 
about the head waters of the Dule and in the back 
parts of the moorland parish of Balweary. For two 
hundred years they had enjoyed in these upland 
quarters a certain decency (almost to be named dis- 
tinction) of repute; and the annals of their house, 
or what is remembered of them, were obscure and 
bloody. Ninian Traquair was "cruallie slochtered" 
by the Crozers at the kirk-door of Balweary, anno 
1482. Francis killed Simon Ruthven of Drum- 
shoreland, anno 1540; bought letters of slayers at 
the widow and heir, and, by a barbarous form of 
compounding, married (without tocher) Simon's 
daughter Grizzel, which is the way the Traquairs and 
Ruthvens came first to an intermarriage. About the 
last Traquair and Ruthven marriage, it is the busi- 
ness of this book, among many other things, to tell. 

The Traquairs were always strong for the Cove- 
nant; for the King also, but the Covenant first; and 
it began to be ill days for Montroymont when the 
Bishops came in and the dragoons at the heels of 
them. Ninian (then laird) was an anxious husband 
of himself and the property, as the times required, 
and it may be said of him that he lost both. He was 
heavily suspected of the Pentland Hills rebellion. 
When it came the length of Bothwell Brig, he stood 



TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT 289 

his trial before the Secret Council, and was convicted 
of talking to some insurgents by the wayside, the 
subject of the conversation not very clearly appear- 
ing, and of the reset and maintenance of one Gale, 
a gardener-man, who was seen before Bothwell with 
a musket, and afterwards, for a continuance of 
months, delved the garden at Montroymont. Mat- 
ters went very ill with Ninian at the Council; some 
of the lords were clear for treason; and even the boot 
was talked of. But he was spared that torture; and 
at last, having pretty good friendship among great 
men, he came off with a fine of seven thousand 
marks, that caused the estate to groan. In this case, 
as in so many others, it was the wife that made the 
trouble. She was a great keeper of conventicles; 
would ride ten miles to one, and when she was fined, 
rejoiced greatly to suffer for the Kirk; but it was 
rather her husband that suffered. She had their 
only son, Francis, baptised privately by the hands of 
Mr. Kidd; there was that much the more to pay 
for! She -could neither be driven nor wiled into 
the parish kirk, as for taking the sacrament at the 
hands of any Episcopalian curate, and tenfold more 
at those of Curate Haddo, there was nothing further 
from her purposes; and Montroymont had to put 
his hand in his pocket month by month and year by 
year. Once, indeed, the little lady was cast in 
prison, and the laird, worthy, heavy, uninterested 
man, had to ride up and take her place; from which 
he was not discharged under nine months and a 
sharp fine. It scarce seemed she had any gratitude to 
him; she came out of jail herself, and plunged imme- 



290 HEATHERCAT 

diately deeper in conventicles, resetting recusants, 
and all her old, expensive folly, only with greater vig- 
our and openness, because Montroymont was safe in 
the Tolbooth and she had no witness to consider. 
When he was liberated and came back, with his 
fingers singed, in December, 1680, and late in the 
black night, my lady was from home. He came 
into the house at his ahghting, with a riding-rod yet 
in his hand; and, on the servant-maid telling him, 
caught her by the scruff of the neck, beat her vio- 
lently, flung her down in the passage-way, and went 
up-stairs to his bed fasting and without a light. 
It was three in the morning when my lady returned 
from that conventicle, and, hearing of the assault 
(because the maid had sat up for her, weeping), 
went to their common chamber with a lantern in 
hand and stamping with her shoes so as to wake the 
dead; it was supposed, by those that heard her, 
from a design to have it out with the goodman at 
once. The house-servants gathered on the stair, 
because it was a main interest with them to know 
which of these two was the better horse; and for the 
space of two hours they were heard to go at the 
matter, hammer and tongs. Montroymont alleged 
he was at the end of his possibilities; it was no 
longer within his power to pay the annual rents; she 
had served him basely by keeping conventicles while 
he lay in prison for her sake; his friends were weary, 
and there was nothing else before him but the entire 
loss of the family lands, and to begin life again by 
the wayside as a common beggar. She took him 
up very sharp and high : called upon him, if he were 



TRAOUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT 291 

a Christian? and which he most considered, the loss 
of a few dirty, miry glebes, or of his soul ? Presently 
he was heard to weep, and my lady's voice to go on 
continually like a running burn, only the words in- 
distinguishable; whereupon it was supposed a vic- 
tory for her ladyship, and the domestics took them- 
selves to bed. The next day Traquair appeared like 
a man who had gone under the harrows; and his 
lady wife thenceforward continued in her old course 
without the least deflection. 

Thenceforward Ninian went on his way without 
complaint, and suffered his wife to go on hers with- 
out remonstrance. He still minded his estate, of 
which, it might be said, he took daily a fresh farewell, 
and counted it already lost; looking ruefully on the 
acres and the graves of his fathers, on the moor- 
lands where the wild-fowl consorted, the low, 
gurgling pool of the trout, and the high, windy 
place of the calling curlews — things that were yet 
his for the day and would be another's to-morrow; 
coming back again, and sitting ciphering till the 
dusk at his approaching ruin, which no device of 
arithmetic could postpone beyond a year or two. 
He was essentially the simple ancient man, the farmer 
and landholder; he would have been content to 
watch the seasons come and go, and his cattle in- 
crease, until the limit of age; he would have been 
content at any time to die, if he could have left the 
estates undiminished to an heir male of his ancestors, 
that duty standing first in his instinctive calendar. 
And now he saw everywhere the image of the new 
proprietor come to meet him, and go sowing and 



292 HEATHERCAT 

reaping, or fowling for his pleasure on the red 
moors, or eating the very gooseberries in the Place 
garden; and saw always, on the other hand, the 
figure of Francis go forth, a beggar, into the broad 
world. 

It was in vain the poor gentleman sought to mod- 
erate; took every test and took advantage of every 
indulgence; went and drank with the dragoons in 
Balweary; attended the communion and came regu- 
larly to the church to Curate Haddo, with his son 
beside him. The mad, raging, Presbyterian zealot of 
a wife at home made all of no avail; and indeed the 
house must have fallen years before if it had not 
been for the secret indulgence of the curate, who 
had a great sympathy with the laird, and winked 
hard at the doings in Montroymont. This curate 
was a man very ill reputed in the country-side, and 
indeed in all Scotland. "Infamous Haddo" is 
Shield's expression. But Patrick Walker is more 
copious. "Curate Hall Haddo," says he, suh voce 
Peden, "or Hell Haddo as he was more justly to be 
called, a pokeful of old condemned errors and the 
filthy lusts of the flesh, a published whoremonger, a 
common gross drunkard, continually and godlessly 
scraping and skirling on a fiddle, continually breath- 
ing flames against the remnant of Israel. But the 
Lord put an end to his piping, and aU these offences 
were composed into one bloody grave." No doubt 
this was written to excuse his slaughter; and I have 
never heard it claimed for Walker that he was either 
a just witness or an indulgent judge. At least, in 
a merely human character, Haddo comes off not 



FRANCIE 293 

wholly amiss in the matter of these Traquairs; not 
that he showed any graces of the Christian, but had 
a sort of pagan decency, which might almost tempt 
one to be concerned about his sudden, violent, and 
unprepared fate. 

II 

FRANCIE 

Francie was eleven years old, shy, secret, and 
rather childish of his age, though not backward in 
schooling, which had been pushed on far by a private 
governor, one M'Brair, a forfeited minister har- 
boured in that capacity at Montroymont. The boy, 
already much employed in secret by his mother, 
was the most apt hand conceivable to run upon a 
message, to carry food to lurking fugitives, or to 
stand sentry on the sky-line above a conventicle. 
It seemed no place on the moorlands was so naked 
but what he would find cover there; and as he knew 
every hag, boulder, and heather-bush in a circuit of 
seven miles about Montroymont, there was scarce 
any spot but what he could leave or approach it 
unseen. This dexterity had won him a reputation 
in that part of the country; and among the many 
children employed in these dangerous affairs, he 
passed under the by-name of Heathercat. 

How much his father knew of thi^ employment 
might be doubted. He took much forethought for 
the boy's future, seeing he was like to be left so 
poorly, and would sometimes assist at his lessons. 



294 HEATHERCAT 

sighing heavily, yawning deep, and now and again 
patting Francie on the shoulder if he seemed to be 
doing ill, by way of a private, kind encouragement. 
But a great part of the day was passed in aimless 
wanderings with his eyes sealed, or in his cabinet 
sitting bemused over the particulars of the coming 
bankruptcy; and the boy would be absent a dozen 
times for once that his father would observe it. 

On the 2nd of July, 1682, the boy had an errand 
from his mother, which must be kept private from 
all, the father included in the first of them. Cross- 
ing the braes, he hears the clatter of a horse's shoes, 
and claps down incontinent in a hag by the way- 
side. And presently he spied his father come riding 
from one direction, and Curate Haddo walking from, 
another; and Montroymont leaning down from the 
saddle, and Haddo getting on his toes (for he was a 
little, ruddy, bald-pated man, more like a dwarf), 
they greeted kindly, and came to a halt within two 
fathoms of the child. 

"Montroymont," the curate said, "the de'il 's in 
't but I '11 have to denunciate your leddy again.'' 

"De'il 's in 't indeed!" says the laird. 

"Man! can ye no induce her to come to the kirk?" 
pursues Haddo; "or to a communion at the least of 
it. For the conventicles, let be! and the same for 
yon solemn fule, M'Brair: I can blink at them. 
But she 's got to come to the kirk, Montroymont." 

"Dinna speak of it," says the laird. "I can do 
nothing with her." 

"Couldn't ye try the stick to her? It works 
wonders whiles," suggested Haddo. "No? I'm 



FRANCIE 295 

wae to hear it. And I suppose ye ken where you 're 
going?" 

"Fine!" said Montroymont. "Fine do I ken 
where: Bankrup'cy and the Bass Rock!" 

"Praise to my bones that I never married!" cried 
the curate. " Well, it 's a grievous thing to me to 
see an auld house dung down that was here before 
Flodden Field. But naebody can say it was with 
my wish." 

"No more they can, Haddo!" says the laird. "A 
good friend ye 've been to me, first and last. I can 
give you that character with a clear conscience." 

Whereupon they separated, and Montroymont 
rode briskly down into the Dule Valley. But of the 
curate Francie was not to be quit so easily. He 
went on with his little, brisk steps to the corner of a 
dyke, and stopped and whistled and waved upon a 
lassie that was herding cattle there. This Janet 
M' Clour was a big lass, being taller than the curate; 
and what made her look the more so, she was kilted 
very high. ' It seemed for a while she would not 
come, and Francie heard her calling Haddo a "daft 
auld fule," and saw her running and dodging him 
among the whins and hags till he was fairly blown. 
But at the last he gets a bottle from his plaid-neuk 
and holds it up to her; whereupon she came at once 
into a composition, and the pair sat, drinking of the 
bottle, and dafhng and laughing together, on a 
mound of heather. The boy had scarce heard of 
these vanities, or he might have been minded of a 
nymph and satyr, if anybody could have taken long- 
leggit Janet for a nymph. But they seemed to be 



296 HEATHERCAT 

huge friends, he thought; and was the more sur- 
prised, when the curate had taken his leave, to see 
the lassie fling stones after him with screeches of 
laughter, and Haddo turn about and caper, and 
shake his staff at her, and laugh louder than herself. 
A wonderful merry pair, they seemed; and when 
Francie crawled out of the hag, he had a great deal 
to consider in his mind. It was possible they were 
all fallen in error about Mr. Haddo, he reflected, — 
having seen him so tender with Montroymont, and 
so kind and playful with the lass Janet; and he had 
a temptation to go out of his road and question her 
herself upon the matter. But he had a strong spirit 
of duty on him; and plodded on instead over the 
braes till he came near the House of Cairngorm. 
There, in a hollow place by the burn-side that was 
shaded by some birks, he was aware of a barefoot 
boy, perhaps a matter of three years older than him- 
self. The two approached with the precautions of 
a pair of strange dogs, looking at each other queerly. 

"It's ill weather on the hills," said the stranger, 
giving the watchword. 

"For a season," said Francie, "but the Lord wifl 
appear." 

"Richt," said the barefoot boy. "Wha' ^re ye 
frae?" 

"The Leddy Montroymont," says Francie. 

"Ha'e then!" says the stranger, and handed him 
a folded paper, and they stood and looked at each 
other again. "It 's unco het," said the boy. 

"Dooms het," says Francie. 

"What do they ca' ye?" says the other. 



FRANCIE 297 

"Francie," says he. "I 'm young Montroymont. 
They ca' me Heathercat." 

"I 'm Jock Crozer," said the boy. And there was 
another pause, while each rolled a stone under his 
foot. 

" Cast your jaiket and I '11 fecht ye for a bawbee," 
cried the elder boy, with sudden violence, and dra- 
matically throwing back his jacket. 

"Na, I have nae time the now," said Francie, with 
a sharp thrill of alarm, because Crozer was much 
the heavier boy. 

''Ye 're feard. Heathercat indeed!" said Crozer, 
for among this infantile army of spies and messen- 
gers the fame of Crozer had gone forth and was re- 
sented by his rivals. And with they that separated. 

On his way home Francie was a good deal occu- 
pied with the recollection of this untoward incident. 
The challenge had been fairly offered and basely 
refused: the tale would be carried all over the coun- 
try, and the lustre of the name of Heathercat be 
dimmed. 'But the scene between Curate Haddo 
and Janet M' Clour had also given him much to 
think of; and he was still puzzling over the case of 
the curate, and why such ill words were said of him, 
and why, if he were so merry-spirited, he should yet 
preach so dry, when, coming over a know, whom 
should he see but Janet, sitting with her back to 
him, minding her cattle! He was always a great 
child for secret, stealthy ways, having been em- 
ployed by his mother on errands when the same was 
necessary; and he came behind the lass without her 
hearing. 



298 HEATHERCAT 

"Jennet," says he. 

"Keep me!" cried Janet, springing up. "O, 
it's you, Maister Francie! Save us, what a fricht 
ye gied me!" 

"Ay, it 's me!" said Francie. "I 've been think- 
ing. Jennet; I saw you and the curate awhile back — " 

"Brat!" cried Janet, and coloured up crimson; 
and the one moment made as if she would have 
stricken him with a ragged stick she had to chase her 
bestial with, and the next was begging and praying 
that he would mention it to none. It was " naebody's 
business, whatever," she said; "it would just start 
a clash in the country"; and there would be nothing 
left for her but to drown herself in Dule Water. 

"Why?" says Francie. 

The girl looked at him and grew scarlet again. 

"And it isna that, anyway," continued Francie. 
"It was just that he seemed so good to ye — like 
our Father in Heaven, I thought; and I thought that 
mebbe, perhaps, we had all been wrong about him 
from the first. But I '11 have to tell Mr. M'Brair; 
I 'm under a kind of a bargain to him to tell him all." 

"Tell it to the divil if ye like for me!" cried the 
lass. " I 've naething to be ashamed of. Tell M'Brair 
to mind his ain affairs," she cried again; "they '11 be 
hot enough for him, if Haddie likes!" And so strode 
off, shoving her beasts before her, and ever and 
again looking back and crying angry words to the 
boy, where he stood mystified. 

By the time he had got home his mind was made 
up that he would say nothing to his mother. My 
Lady Montroymont was in the keeping-room, read- 



FRANCIE 299 

ing a godly book; she was a wonderful frail little 
wife to make so much noise in the world and be able 
to steer about that patient sheep her husband; her 
eyes were like sloes, the fingers of her hands were like 
tobacco-pipe shanks, her mouth shut tight like a 
trap; and even when she was the most serious, and 
still more when she was angry, there hung about her 
face the terrifying semblance of a smile. 

"Have ye gotten the billet, Francie?" said she; 
and when he had handed it over, and she had read 
and burned it, "Did you see anybody?" she asked. 

"I saw the laird," said Francie. 

"He dinna se you, though?" asked his mother. 

"De'il a fear," from Francie. 

"Francie!" she cried. "What's that I hear? an 
aith ? The Lord forgive me, have I broughten forth 
a brand for the burning, a fagot for hell-fire?" 

^'I'm very sorry, ma'am," said Francie. "I 
humbly beg the Lord's pardon, and yours, for my 
wickedness." 

"H'm," 'grunted the lady. "Did ye see nobody 
else?" 

"No, ma'am," said Francie, with the face of an 
angel, "except Jock Crozer, that gied me the billet." 

"Jock Crozer!" cried the lady. "I'll Crozer 
them! Crozers indeed! What next? Are we to 
repose the lives of a suffering remnant in Crozers ? 
The whole clan of them wants hanging, and if I had 
my way of it, they wouldna want it long. Are you 
aware, sir, that these Crozers killed your forebear at 
the kirk-door?" 

"You see, he was bigger 'n me," said Francie. 



300 HEATHERCAT 

"Jock Crozer," continued the lady. "That '11 be 
Clement's son, the biggest thief and reiver in the 
country-side. To trust a note to him! But I '11 
give the benefit of my opinions to Lady Whitecross 
when we two forgather. Let her look to herself! I 
have no patience with half-hearted carlines, that com- 
plies on the Lord's-day morning with the kirk, and 
comes tailing the same night to the conventicle. 
The one or the other! is what I say: Hell or Heaven 
— Haddie's abominations or the pure word of God 
dreeping from the Hps of Mr. Arnot, 

"'Like honey from the honeycomb 
That dreepeth, sweeter far.' " 

My lady was now fairly launched, and that upon 
two congenial subjects: the deficiencies of the Lady 
Whitecross, and the turpitudes of the whole Crozer 
race — which, indeed, had never been conspicuous 
for respectability. She pursued the pair of them for 
twenty minutes on the clock, with wonderful anima- 
tion and detail, something of the pulpit manner, and 
the spirit of one possessed. " O hellish compliance ! " 
she exclaimed. "I would not suffer a complier to 
break bread with Christian folk. Of all the sins of 
this day there is not one so God-defying, so Christ- 
humiliating, as damnable compliance"; the boy 
standing before her meanwhile, and brokenly pur- 
suing other thoughts, mainly of Haddo and Janet, 
and Jock Crozer stripping off his jacket. And yet, 
with all his distraction, it might be argued that he 
heard too much; his father and himself being "com- 



FRANCIE 301 

pliers" — that is to say, attending the church of the 
parish as the law required. 

Presently, the lady's passion beginning to decline, 
or her flux of ill words to be exhausted, she dismissed 
her audience.- Francie bowed low, left the room, 
closed the door behind him; and then turned him 
about in the passage-way, and with a low voice, but 
a prodigious deal of sentiment, repeated the name of 
the evil one twenty times over, to the end of which, 
for the greater efficacy, he tacked on "damnable" 
and "hellish." Fas est ah hoste doceri — disrespect 
is made more pungent by quotation; and there is no 
doubt but he felt relieved, and went up-stairs into 
his tutor's chamber with a quiet mind. M'Brair 
sat by the cheek of the peat-fire and shivered, for he 
had a quartan ague, and this was his day. The 
great nightcap and plaid, the dark unshaven cheeks 
of the man, and the white, thin hands that held the 
plaid about his chittering body, made a sorrowful 
picture. But Francie knew and loved him; came 
straight in,' and nestled close to the refugee, and told 
his story. M'Brair had been at the College with 
Haddo; the Presbytery had licensed both on the 
same day; and at this tale, told with so much inno- 
cency by the boy, the heart of the tutor was com- 
moved. 

"Woe upon him! Woe upon that man!" he cried. 
"O the unfaithful shepherd! O the hireling and 
apostate minister! Make my matters hot for me? 
quo' she! the shameless limmer! And true it is that 
he could repose me in that nasty, stinking hole the 
Canongate Tolbooth, from which your mother drew 



302 HEATHERCAT 

me out — the Lord reward her for it! — or to that 
cold, unbieldy, marine place of the Bass Rock, 
which, with my delicate kist, would be fair ruin to 
me. But I will be valiant in my Master's service. 
I have a duty here: a duty to my God, to myself, 
and to Haddo: in His strength, I will perform it." 

Then he straightly discharged Francie to repeat 
the tale, and bade him in the future to avert his very 
eyes from the doings of the curate. "You must go 
to his place of idolatry; look upon him there!" says 
he, "but nowhere else. Avert your eyes, close your 
ears, pass him by like a three days' corp'. He is Hke 
that damnable monster Basiliscus, which defiles — 
yea, poisons! — by the sight." All which was 
hardly claratory to the boy's mind. 

Presently Montroymont came home, and called 
up the stairs to Francie. Traquair was a good shot 
and swordsman; and it was his pleasure to walk 
with his son over the braes of the moor-fowl, or to 
teach him arms in the back court, when they made 
a mighty comely pair, the child being so lean and 
light and active, and the laird himself a man of a 
manly, pretty stature, his hair (the periwig being 
laid aside) showing already white with many anxi- 
eties, and his face of an even, flaccid red. But this 
day Francie's heart was not in the fencing. 

"Sir," says he, suddenly lowering his point, "will 
ye tell me a thing if I was to ask it?" 

"Ask away," says the father. 

"Well, it 's this," said Francie: "Why do you and 
me comply if it 's so wicked?" 

"Ay, ye have the cant of it too!" cried Montroy- 



FRANCIE 303 

mont "But I'll tell ye for all that. It's to try 
and see if we can keep the rigging on this house, 
Francie. If she had her way, we would be beggar- 
folk, and hold our hands out by the wayside. When 
ye hear her — when ye hear folk," he corrected 
himself briskly, "call me a coward, and one that 
betrayed the Lord, and I kenna what else, just mind 
it was to keep a bed to ye to sleep in and a bite for 
ye to eat. — On guard!" he cried, and the lesson 
proceeded again till they were called to supper. 

"There's another thing yet," said Francie, stop- 
ping his father. " There 's another thing that I am 
not sure I am very caring for. She — she sends me 
errands." 

" Obey her, then, as is your bounden duty," said 
Traquair. 

"Ay, but wait till I tell ye," says the boy. "If I 
was to see you I was to hide." 

Montroymont sighed. " Well, and that 's good of 
her too," said he. "The less that I ken of thir 
doings the better for me; and the best thing you can 
do is just to obey her, and see and be a good son to 
her, the same as ye are to me, Francie." 

At the tenderness of this expression the heart of 
Francie swelled within his bosom, and his remorse 
was poured out. "Faitherl" he cried, " I said 
'de'il' to-day; many 's the time I said it, and 'dam- 
nable' too, and 'helhtsh.' I ken they're all right; 
they 're beeblical. But I didna say them beeblically; 
I said them for sweir-words — that 's the truth of it." 

"Hout, ye silly bairn!" said the father; "dinna do 
it nae mair, and come in by to your supper." And 



304 HEATHERCAT 

he took the boy, and drew him close to him a mo- 
ment, as they went through the door, with something 
very fond and secret, Hke a caress between a pair of 
lovers. 

The next day M^Brair was abroad in the after- 
noon, and had a long advising with Janet on the 
braes where she herded cattle. What passed was 
never wholly known; but the lass wept bitterly, and 
fell on her knees to him among the whins. The 
same night, as soon as it was dark, he took the road 
again for Balweary. In the Kirkton, where the 
dragoons quartered, he saw many lights, and heard 
the noise of a ranting song and people laughing 
grossly, which was highly offensive to his mind. He 
gave it the wider berth, keeping among the fields; 
and came down at last by the waterside, where the 
manse stands solitary between the river and the 
road. He tapped at the back door, and the old 
woman called upon him to come in, and guided him 
through the house to the study, as they still called it, 
though there was little enough study there in Haddo's 
days, and more song-books than theology. 

"Here 's yin to speak wi' ye, Mr. Haddie!" cries 
the old wife. 

And M'Brair, opening the door and entering, 
found the little, round, red man seated in one chair 
and his feet upon another. A clear fire and a tallow 
dip lighted him barely. He was taking tobacco in a 
pipe, and smiling to himself; and a brandy-bottle 
and glass, and his fiddle and bow, were beside him 
on the table. 

"Hech, Patey M'Brair, is this you?" said he, a 



FRANCIE 305 

trifle tipsily. "Step in by, man, and have a drop 
brandy: for the stomach's sake! Even the de'il can 
quote Scripture — eh, Patey?" 

"I will neither eat nor drink with you," replied 
M'Brair. "I am come upon my Master's errand: 
woe be upon me if I should anyways mince the same. 
Hall Haddo, I summon you to quit this kirk which 
you encumber. 

"Muckle obleeged!" says Haddo, winking. 

"You and me have been to kirk and market to- 
gether," pursued M'Brair: "we have had blessed sea- 
sons in the kirk, we have sat in the same teaching- 
rooms and read in the same book; and I know you 
still retain for me some carnal kindness. It would 
be my shame if I denied it; I live here at your mercy 
and by your favour, and glory to acknowledge it. 
You have pity on my wretched body, which is but 
grass, and must soon be trodden under; but O, 
Haddo! how much greater is the yearning with 
which I yearn after and pity your immortal soul! 
Come now,' let us reason together! I drop all points 
of controversy, weighty though these be; I take your 
defaced and damnified kirk on your own terms; and 
I ask you. Are you a worthy minister? The com- 
munion season approaches ; how can you pronounce 
thir solemn words, 'The elders will now bring forrit 
the elements,' and not quail ? A parishioner may be 
summoned to-night; you may have to rise from your 
miserable orgies; and I ask you, Haddo, what does 
your conscience tell you ? Are you fit ? Are you fit 
to smooth the pillow of a parting Christian ? And if 
the summons should be for yourself, how then?" 



3o6 HEATHERCAT 

Haddo was startled out of all composure and the 
better part of his temper. "What 's this of it?" he 
cried. ''I 'm no waur than my neebours. I never 
set up to be speeritual; I never did. I 'm a plain, 
canty creature; godliness is cheerfulness, says I; 
give me my fiddle and a dram, and I wouldna hairm 
a flee." 

"And I repeat my question," said M'Brair: "Are 
you fit — fit for this great charge ? Fit to carry and 
save souls?" 

" Fit ? Blethers ! As fit 's yoursel'," cried Haddo. 

"Are you so great a self-deceiver?" said M^Brair. 
"Wretched man, trampler upon God's covenants, 
crucifier of your Lord afresh ! I will ding you to the 
earth with one word: How about the young woman, 
Janet M'Clour?" 

"Well, what about her? what do I ken?" cries 
Haddo. "M'Brair, ye daft auld wife, I tell ye as 
true 's truth, I never meddled her. It was just 
daffing, I tell ye: daffing, and nae mair: a piece of 
fun, like! I 'm no denying but what I 'm fond of 
fun, sma' blame to me! But for onything sarious — • 
hout, man, it might come to a deposeetion! I '11 sweir 
it to ye. Where 's a Bible, till you hear me sweir?" 

"There is nae Bible in your study," said M'Brair, 
severely. 

And Haddo, after a few distracted turns, was con- 
strained to accept the fact. 

"Weel, and suppose there isna?" he cried, stamp- 
ing. " What mair can ye say of us, but just that I 'm 
fond of my joke, and so 's she ? I declare to God 
by what I ken, she might be the Virgin Mary — if 



FRANCIE 307 

she would just keep clear of the dragoons. But me! 
na, de'il haet o' me!" 

"She is penitent at least," says M^Brair. 

"Do you mean to actually up and tell me to my 
face that she accused me?" cried the curate. 

"I canna just say that," rephed M'Brair. "But I 
rebuked her in the name of God, and she repented 
before me on her bended knees." 

" Weel, I daur say she 's been ower far wi' the 
dragoons," said Haddo. "I never denied that. I 
ken naething by it." 

"Man, you but show your nakedness the more 
plainly," said M'Brair. "Poor, blind, besotted crea- 
ture — and I see you stoitering on the brink of dis- 
solution: your light out, and your hours numbered. 
Awake, man!" he shouted with a formidable voice, 
"awake, or it be ower late." 

"Be damned if I stand this!" exclaimed Haddo, 
casting his tobacco-pipe violently on the table, 
where it was smashed to pieces. " Out of my house 
with ye, or I '-11 call for the dragoons." 

"The speerit of the Lord is upon me," said 
M'Brair, with solemn ecstasy. "I sist you to com- 
pear before the Great White Throne, and I warn 
you the summons shall be bloody and sudden." 

And at this, with more agility than could have 
been expected, he got clear of the room and slammed 
the door behind him in the face of the pursuing 
curate. The next Lord's day the curate was ill, 
and the kirk closed, but for all his ill words, Mr. 
M'Brair abode unmolested in the house of Mon- 
troymont. 



3o8 HEATHERCAT 



III 

THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 

This was a bit of a steep broken hill that over- 
looked upon the west a moorish valley, full of ink- 
black pools. These presently drained into a burn 
that made off, with little noise and no celerity of 
pace, about the corner of the hill. On the far side 
the ground swelled into a bare heath, black with 
junipers, and spotted with the presence of the 
standing stones for which the place was famous. 
They were many in that part, shapeless, white with 
lichen — you would have said with age; and had 
made their abode there for untold centuries, since 
first the heathens shouted for their installation. 
The ancients had hallowed them to some ill religion, 
and their neighbourhood had long been avoided by 
the prudent before the fall of day; but of late, on 
the upspringing of new requirements, these lonely 
stones on the moor had again become a place of 
assembly. A watchful picket on the Hill-end com- 
manded all the northern and eastern approaches; 
and such was the disposition of the ground, that by 
certain cunningly posted sentries the west also 
could be made secure against surprise: there was 
no place in the country where a conventicle could 
meet with more quiet of mind or a more certain 
retreat open, in the case of interference from the 
dragoons. The minister spoke from a know close 
to the edge of the Ring, and poured out the words 



THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 309 

God gave him on the very threshold of the devils of 
yore. When they pitched a tent (which was often 
in wet weather, upon a communion occasion) it was 
rigged over the huge isolated pillar that has the 
name of Anes-Errand, none knew why. And the 
congregation sat partly clustered on the slope below, 
and partly among the idolatrous monoliths and on 
the turfy soil of the Ring itself. In truth the situa- 
tion was well qualified to give a zest to Christian 
doctrines, had there been any wanted. But these 
congregations assembled under conditions at once 
so formidable and romantic as made a zealot of 
the most cold. They were the last of the faithful; 
God, who had averted His face from all other coun- 
tries of the world, still leaned from Heaven to ob- 
serve, with swelling sympathy, the doings of His 
moorland remnant; Christ was by them with His 
eternal wounds, with dropping tears; the Holy 
Ghost (never perfectly realised nor firmly adopted by 
Protestant imaginations) was dimly supposed to be 
in the heatt of each and on the lips of the minister. 
And over against them was the army of the hier- 
archies, from the men Charles and James Stuart, 
on to King Lewie and the Emperor; and the scarlet 
Pope, and the muckle black devil himself, peering 
out the red mouth of hell in an ecstasy of hate and 
hope. "One pull more!" he seemed to cry; "one 
pull more, and it 's done. There 's only Clydesdale 
and the Stewartry, and the three Bailieries of Ayr, 
left for God." And with such an august assistance 
of powers and principalities looking on at the last 
conflict of good and evil, it was scarce possible to 



3IO HEATHERCAT 

spare a thought to those old, infirm, debile, db 
agendo devils whose holy place they were now 
violating. 

There might have been three hundred to four 
hundred present. At least there were three hundred 
horse tethered for the most part in the Ring; though 
some of the hearers on the outskirts of the crowd 
stood with their bridles in their hand, ready to 
mount at the first signal. The circle of faces was 
strangely characteristic; long, serious, strongly 
marked, the tackle standing out in the lean brown 
cheeks, the mouth set, and the eyes shining with a 
fierce enthusiasm; the shepherd, the labouring man, 
and the rarer laird, stood there in their broad blue 
bonnets or laced hats, and presenting an essential 
identity of type. From time to time along-drawn 
groan of adhesion rose in this audience, and was 
propagated like a wave to the outskirts, and died 
away among the keepers of the horses. It had a 
name; it was called "a holy groan." 

A squall came up; a great volley of flying mist 
went out before it and whelmed the scene; the wind 
stormed with a sudden fierceness that carried away 
the minister's voice and twitched his tails and made 
him stagger, and turned the congregation for a 
moment into a mere pother of blowing plaid-ends 
and prancing horses; and the rain followed and was 
dashed straight into their faces. Men and women 
panted aloud in the shock of that violent shower-bath; 
the teeth were bared along all the line in an invol- 
untary grimace; plaids, mantles, and riding-coats 
were proved vain, and the worshippers felt the water 



THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 311 

stream on their naked flesh. The minister, rein- 
forcing his great and shrill voice, continued to con- 
tend against and triumph over the rising of the 
squall and the dashing of the rain. 

" In that day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a 
era wing cock," he said; "and fifty mile and not get 
a hght to your pipe; and an hundred mile and not 
see a smoking house. For there '11 be naething in 
all Scotland but deid men's banes and blackness, 
and the living anger of the Lord. O, where to find 
a bield — O sirs, where to find a bield from the wind 
of the Lord's anger? Do ye call this a wind? Be 
thankit! Sirs, this is but a temporary dispensation; 
this is but a puff of wind, this is but a spit of rain 
and by with it. Already there 's a blue bow in the 
west, and the sun will take the crown of the cause- 
way again, and your things '11 be dried upon ye, and 
your flesh will be warm upon your bones. But O, 
sirs, sirs! for the day of the Lord's anger!" 

His rhetoric was set forth with an ear-piercing 
elocution," and a voice that sometimes crashed like 
cannon. Such as i<!^was, it was the gift of all hill- 
preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. 
Their images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon 
of the moor and the rainy hill-top, the shepherd and 
his sheep, a fowling-piece, a spade, a pipe, a dung- 
hill, a crowing cock, the shining and the withdrawal 
of the sun. An occasional pathos of simple human- 
ity, and frequent patches of big biblical words, re- 
lieved the homely tissue. It was a poetry apart; 
bleak, austere, but genuine, and redolent of the 
soil. 



312 HEATHERCAT 

A little before the coming of the squall there was 
a different scene enacting at the outposts. For the 
most part the sentinels were faithful to their import- 
ant duty; the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to 
be a safe meeting-place; and the out-pickets on this 
particular day had been somewhat lax from the 
beginning, and grew laxer during the inordinate 
length of the discourse. Francie lay there in his 
appointed hiding-hole, looking abroad between two 
whin-bushes. His view was across the course of the 
burn, then over a piece of plain moorland, to a gap 
between two hills; nothing moved but grouse, and 
some cattle who slowly traversed his field of view, 
heading northward: he heard the psalms, and sang 
words of his own to the savage and melancholy 
music; for he had his own design in hand, and 
terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom alter- 
nately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. 
Courage was uppermost during the singing, which he 
accompanied through all its length with this im- 
promptu strain: 

"And I will ding Jock Crozer down 
No later than the day." 

Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in 
wafts, at the wind's will, as by the opening and shut- 
ting of a door; wild spasms of screaming, as of some 
undiscerned gigantic hill-bird stirred with inordinate 
passion, succeeded to intervals of silence; and 
Francie heard them with a critical ear. "Ay," he 
thought at last, "he '11 do; he has the bit in his mou* 
fairly." 



THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 313 

He had observed that his friend, or rather his 
enemy, Jock Crozer, had been estabhshed at a very 
critical part of the Hne of outposts; namely, where 
the burn issues by an abrupt gorge from the semi- 
circle of high moors. If anything was calculated to 
nerve him to battle it was this. The post was im- 
portant; next to the Hill-end itself, it might be 
called the key to the position; and it was where the 
cover was bad, and in which it was most natural to 
place a child. It should have been Heathercat's; 
why had it been given to Crozer? An exquisite 
fear of what should be the answer passed through 
his marrow every time he faced the question. Was 
it possible that Crozer could have boasted ? that there 
were rumours abroad to his — Heathercat's — dis- 
credit? that his honour was publicly sullied? All 
the world went dark about him at the thought; he 
sank without a struggle into the midnight pool of 
despair; and every time he so sank, he brought back 
with him — not drowned heroism indeed, but half- 
drowned courage by the locks. His heart beat very 
slowly as he deserted his station, and began to crawl 
towards that of Crozer. Something pulled him 
back, and it was not the sense of duty, but a remem- 
brance of Crozer's build and hateful readiness of 
fist. Duty, as he conceived it, pointed him forward 
on the rueful path that he was travelling. Duty 
bade him redeem his name if he were able, at the 
risk of broken bones; and his bones and every tooth 
in his head ached by anticipation. An awful sub- 
sidiary fear whispered him that if he were hurt, he 
should disgrace himself by weeping. He consoled 



314 HEATHERCAT 

himself, boy-like, with the consideration that he 
was not yet committed; he could easily steal over 
unseen to Crozer's post, and he had a continuous 
private idea that he would very probably steal back 
again. His course took him so near the minister 
that he could hear some of his words: "What news, 
minister, of Claver'se ? He 's going round like a 
roaring, rampaging lion . . . 



EDITORIAL NOTE 

The story, which opens with these scenes of covenanting 
life and character in Scotland, was intended to shift presently 
across the Atlantic, first to the Carolina plantations, and next 
to the ill-fated Scotch settlement in Darien. Practically all 
that we knov/ of it is contained in one or two passages of letters 
from the author to Mr. Charles Baxter and Mr. S. R. Crockett. 
To Mr. Baxter he writes as follows: 

"6 Deer., 1893. 

" 'Oct. 25, 1685, at Privy Council, George Murray, Lieu- 
tenant of the King's Guard, and others, did, on the 21 of Sep- 
tember last, obtain a clandestine order of Privy Council to 
apprehend the person of Janet Pringle, daughter to the late 
Clifton, and she having retired out of the way upon information, 
he got an order against Andrew Pringle, her uncle, to produce 
her. . . . But she having married Andrew Pringle, her uncle's 
son (to disappoint all their designs of selling her), a boy of 13 
years old' — but my boy is 14, so I extract no further {Foun- 
tainhall, i. 320). May 6, 1685, Wappus Pringle of Clifton was 
still alive after all,^ and in prison for debt, and transacts with 
Lieutenant Murray, giving security for 7000 marks (i. 320). 

"My dear Charles, the above is my story, and I wonder if 
any light can be thrown on it. I prefer the girl's father dead; 

^ No; it seems to have been her brother who had succeeded. 



EDITORIAL NOTE 315 

and the question is how in that case could Lieutenant George 
Murray get his order to apprehend and his power to sell her 
in marriage? Or . . . might Lieutenant G. be her tutor, and 
the fugitive to the Pringles, and on the discovery of her where- 
abouts hastily married? A good legal note on these points is 
very ardently desired by me; it will be the corner-stone of my 
novel. 

"This is for — I am quite wrong to tell you, for you will tell 
others, and nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in 
the air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the 
clouds — it is for Heathercat; whereof the first volume will be 
called The Killing Time; and I believe I have authorities 
ample for that. But the second volume is to be called (I believe) 
Darien, and for that I want, I fear, a good deal of truck. 

Darien papers, 
Carstairs papers, 
Marchmont papers, 
Jerviswood correspondence — 

I hope may do me; some sort of general history of the Darien 
affair (if there is a decent one, which I misdoubt) it would also 
be well to have; the one with most details, if possible. It is 
singular how .obscure to me this decade of Scots History remains, 
1690-1700: a deuce of a want of light and grouping to it. 
However, I believe I shall be mostly out of Scotland in my tale; 
first in Carolina and next in Darien." 

The place of Andrew Pringle, in the historical extract above 
quoted, was evidently to be taken in Stevenson's story by 
Ninian Traquair of Montroymont. In a rough draft of chap- 
ter headings, chap. vi. bears the title, ''The Ward Comes Home"; 
another chapter shows that her name was to have been Jean 
Ruthven; plainly Francie Traquair was to be the boy-husband 
to whom this Jean was to be united in order to frustrate the 
designs of those who hoped to control her person and traffic 
in her marriage. 

The references in the author's letters to IMr. Crockett date 



3i6 HEATHERCAT 

from June 30, 1893, and afterwards. His correspondent was 
about this time engaged in preparing a covenanting romance of 
his own — The Men of the Moss-Hags. On the first-named 
date Stevenson writes: "It may interest you to know that Weir 
oj Hermiston, or The Hanging Judge, or whatever the mischief 
the thing is to be called, centres about the grave of the Praying 
Weaver of Balweary. And when Heathercat is written, if it 
ever is, O, then there will be another chance for the Societies" 
(i.e., the United Societies, generally known in history as the 
Cameronians). A little later Stevenson received from the same 
correspondent, at his own request, materials for his work in the 
shape of extracts collected from the Earlston papers by the 
Rev. John Anderson, Assistant Curator of the Historical 
Department, Register House, Edinburgh; the minutes of the 
Societies, edited by the Rev. John Howie of Lochgoin, entitled 
''Faithful Contendings," etc., etc. Later, he sends a humor- 
ous sketch of a trespassing board and gallows, with R. L. S. 
in the act of hanging S. R. C, and on the board the words: 
"Notice — The Cameronians are the proppaty of me, R. L. S. 
— trespassers and Raiders will be hung." In the letter accom- 
panying this he says: "I have made many notes for Heathercat, 
but do not get much forrader. For one thing, I am not inside 
these people yet. Wait three years and / 7/ race you. For 
another thing, I am not a keen partisan, and to write a good 
book you must be. The Society men were brave, dour-headed, 
strong-hearted men fighting a hard battle and fighting it hardly. 
That is about all the use I have for them." Finally, in a letter 
written shortly before his death, he mentions having laid the 
story on the shelf, whether permanently or only for a while he 
does not know. 



MAY 12 1911 



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